Two huge media companies, Meta (Instagram) and Google (YouTube), were found guilty last month of intentionally designing their products to addict young people.
Among those addicting features, reportedly, are the ability to scroll endlessly, aka infinite scroll, algorithms that deliver curated content, short video clips, and push notifications. You know, all the stuff you encounter when you’re online.
Impose age limits, you say? I’ve wondered myself how websites can prove or disprove the age I give them. I think it’s a very imperfect safeguard that anyone halfway determined can probably get around.
The guilty verdict was wrong. Why? Because those features weren’t and aren’t designed specifically to attract and addict kids. They are common features in most social media and many, many websites online. They are features intended to attract any and all ages, everybody and anybody who will pay attention, stay on the site, see the ads, return to the site again and again. It just happens that young people are more attracted by and vulnerable to those features, and generally have more time to spend online.
In my opinion the fault lies instead with those parents and guardians who allow their young kids to have phones and computers — if not actually provide them — and then not monitor their use.
The kids stay online for many hours a day? Where are the parents during those many hours? Why were impressionable, immature youngsters given unlimited, unsupervised access in the first place?
That’s all. Just wanted to say that. I don’t blame the companies for trying to attract and keep audiences for their products and services, particularly when their audience is the product. That’s their business, their corporate raison d’être.
Not surprisingly, Meta and Google have said they will appeal. (Google certainly should because YouTube is not a social media platform.)
(To be clear, I think social media is doing a lot of damage in our society and I wish it didn’t exist at all. But I don’t think its features are designed specifically to addict kids.)
You talk nothing but logic, Colorado.
What’s needed, in the absence of the parental oversight, is phone control to limit the time spent – to be programmed including no. of hours between sessions.
But it would be, were it possible in these times of entitled kids, infinitely preferable that they not be given phone until responsible.