State of the Union raises an important question about social media: What to do about the kids?
President Biden’s remarks during his State of the Union raised the profile of a narrow approach to technology regulation that is gaining steam.
In his speech, the president said, “…we must hold social media platforms accountable for the national experiment they’re conducting on our children for profit” and urged policymakers to, “strengthen privacy protections, ban targeted advertising to children, [and] demand tech companies stop collecting personal data on our children.”
What are we to make of these claims and proposals?
First, context is important. Children and new technologies are often a point of focus and concern, justifiably so. Children should be protected from harm. This can and does happen in good ways.
Governments eventually promulgated an age requirement for automobiles, although it was at least 10 years between the introduction of the Ford Model T and widespread age requirements. Nowadays, we take for granted that 10 year-olds aren’t allowed to drive, but in the early days society wrestled with the question. On the other hand, sometimes society wrestles with new technologies or media and concludes that the government should not be involved. In 1927 Senator Love blamed jazz novels for youth suicides. Instead of banning them, a robust children and young adult literature industry grew and is moderated by cultural norms and parental and caregiver oversight. Now we would say children and teenagers don’t read enough!
Second, what the president refers to as a “national experiment for profit” is the ubiquity of social media platforms and the high use rates among teenagers between 13 and 18.
Minors under 13 are not permitted to use major social media platforms. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Snapchat all have this rule. Therefore, to the extent there is a problem with younger kids, it really comes down to age verification of online users, which is its own problem for which there are limited solutions. There are trade-offs, as the Wall Street Journal reports: more identification information means more privacy risks and less or no chance at anonymity. Perhaps companies should raise the user age requirement to 16 or 18, but doing so may have limited effect and does not avoid the age verification issue. Nonetheless, companies and researchers are working on solutions — just do a simple search for “website age verification.”
This raises issues with the president’s policy solutions. In order to “ban targeted advertising to children” a platform needs to know who is and is not a child. Again, this comes back to age verification. Likewise for the third proposal to stop collection “of personal data on our children.” Platforms need to know who the children are. Indeed, such efforts could cause privacy issues of their own because some data is required — documentation, images, or other information — to verify ages. Credit cards have been the patchwork solution thus far, the assumption being minors can’t have credit cards, but that presents privacy issues since credit card information is liable to theft. Either way, this verification system does not prevent the workaround of a child using a parent’s credit card without permission.
New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt makes a compelling case that the solution should be narrowly tailored to teenage girls on Instagram. Such a focus would at least lead to policy solutions that could address the problem rather than being a catch-all for the feelings of distrust toward new technologies.
Of course, this discussion needs to acknowledge that the predominant platforms attractive to teenagers will likely shift significantly in the time it takes for regulators and policymakers to agree on a path forward. This is not a reason to do nothing, but it highlights the notion that there should be humility involved.
In any case, the president and others are right to care for our nation’s children. Their lives are precious and as we all know, childhood conditions impact the remainder of a person’s life.
President Biden repeatedly trumpeted the need for a bottom-up approach in his state of the union, and that’s the best path toward protecting children online. That approach recognizes that that users, including children, are not powerless before big tech platforms.
Parents, caregivers, teachers, and others can and should set limits for the children they know best and teach them and others that they have agency in which services they use and how they use them. Companies can and should do a much better job of publicizing their products like YouTube Kids, Messenger for Kids, and the tool sets they’ve developed for caregivers.
When I speak with concerned parents, it’s incredible how many don’t know these services and tools even exist. Additionally, when companies develop platforms for young users, those products should not be dismissed. Big companies are often the only ones that have the resources to keep content safe and comply with current regulations protecting children.
Bottom-up solutions like these allow us to mitigate problems, promote innovation, and adapt as conditions change. As we’ve seen throughout American history when new technologies and media arise, we can arrive at solutions that keep children and minors safe through various means. Top-down is not the only way.
By Taylor Barkley, Director, Technology and Innovation at Stand Together
