On Nov. 7, Arturo Béjar, a former employee of Meta, testified before a Senate subcommittee that Meta’s leadership, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, ignored clear evidence of harms perpetrated against kids and teens on Instagram and Facebook.
According to internal surveys, approximately 22 percent of Instagram users ages 13 to 15 reported being victims of bullying, 24 percent were subjected to unwanted advances, and 39 percent experienced negative comparison. Béjar stated, “We cannot trust [Meta] with our children and it’s time for Congress to act.”
These new revelations, building on the disclosures by Meta whistleblower Frances Haugen, follow Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy’s advisory this May, warning that social media poses a significant threat to the psychological health and well-being of kids and teens. Dr. Murthy implored legislators, tech firms and parents to take immediate action.
This has created a perfect storm, igniting a bipartisan drive for new regulations. In fact, in these divided times, this is one of the few topics that voters and leaders on both sides of the aisle can get behind.
Reading the room, Meta advanced a legislative initiative on Nov. 15 that would require parents to approve app downloads for their kids under age 16. Yet this PR distraction shirks the responsibilities of social media companies while failing to solve the core problems. It doesn’t even work in the first place, without authentication systems in place to verify kids and their parents.
What can we do right now to protect the youth of America? It’s time for succinct, bold action.
For starters, we can look to the United Kingdom and Europe, which have outpaced the United States in recent years when it comes to web regulations that safeguard younger users.
In August, the European Union enacted the Digital Services Act. This sweeping legislation covers a number of directives, including enhanced user privacy, transparency, limitations on advertising to minors, and prohibitions on certain types of targeting, including to one’s political views, religion or sexual preferences. While this legislation includes several applaudable components, its highly complicated and multi-faceted structure makes it an unlikely candidate to be replicated here in our divided United States.
In October, the U.K. officially signed into law the Online Safety Act, designed to make the U.K. “the safest place” in the world for Web users. This legislation has received fierce criticism from privacy advocates for giving the U.K.’s government the authority to examine users’ messages and data to find child exploitation material. Despite its good intentions of keeping kids safe, this act will essentially outlaw end-to-end encryption, one of the last bastions of online privacy that humanity has left.
Here in the United States, there have been several attempts at legislation that protects kids and teens online, but all are log-jammed in Congress. One of the more popular bipartisan bills is the Kids Online Safety Act. However, this legislation also includes components that have raised alarms from critics, such as its introduction of a “duty to care” directive. This would hold tech firms accountable for damages that minors might incur from seeing content, and demands that platforms “prevent and mitigate” such content. Such vague language leaves the door open for censorship of political speech on social media, depending on which political party is in power.
Another bipartisan bill stuck in Congress is the Protecting Kids on Social Media Act. Though this bill has several sound elements, it too is complex and multi-faceted, including controversial components such as requiring that teenagers get permission from their parents to use social media. This has raised red flags for those advocating privacy and free speech rights for teens.
We need a better approach, right now. Here are three separate, standalone legislative recommendations that are narrow, straightforward and likely to have bipartisan support.
First, let’s take the best piece of the Protecting Kids Act, to “prohibit the use of algorithmic recommendation systems on individuals under age 18.” Tim Kendall, Meta’s ex-head of monetization, admitted during a Congress hearing that Meta developed algorithms that spread misinformation, fuel polarization and lay the groundwork for a “mental health crisis.” Getting this into the law books now will stop this practice.
Second is separate, narrow legislation that mandates all minors’ profiles on social media are set to “private.” This is the best solution to prevent kids and teens from experiencing unwanted advances from all kinds of bad actors. In this scenario, a minor’s profile won’t be findable in open directories, and no unknown users can tag them, message them, comment on their posts or interact with their profiles. Making a profile private is currently optional on Facebook and Instagram. This must be mandatory for minors.
Third, there must be narrow legislation requiring large social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, and TikTok to have mandatory age verification for users. The age authentication system envisioned won’t gather any additional personal information other than the minimum necessary to ascertain a user’s identity. Without this directive, there’s nothing to stop adults or trolls from posing as kids, or kids from lying about their age, as often happens today. Echoing the European Union’s Digital Services Act, this directive would apply to all large social networks operating in the U.S.
Tech giants routinely violate regulations and pay the fines as a cost of doing business. Therefore, any legislation must come with strict penalties for violators. For instance, the U.K.’s Online Safety Act stipulates that executives of tech firms can face prosecution and prison time for violations.
Of course, these three legislative recommendations won’t solve all the issues when it comes to keeping our youth safe online. Akin to the first seatbelt laws, they are necessary first steps. Social media has veered dangerously out of control. We don’t need more proof. The whistle has been blown.
Mark Weinstein is a world-renowned tech thought leader and privacy expert. He is the founder of the social network MeWe, which he left in July 2022, and is currently writing a book on the intersection of social media, mental health, privacy, civil discourse and democracy.