Fix social media at home

I’m sure people from my generation remember what it was like growing up in the late 1990s and early 2000s in terms of access to electronic devices. The concept of a smartphone was still science fiction before 2007. The TV, game console and family computer were in the most prominent places in the house so parents could supervise us. The phones were only handed to us to “call in case of an emergency”.

Devices were single use with phones being for calling, MP3 players for music and consoles for games. Schools were constantly giving us talks about how malicious people on the internet can be. All while, above all else, as much as we hated the restriction of not owning the shiny new game and spending exactly one hour playing before it’s your sibling’s turn, we now look back and appreciate that it was necessary for our wellbeing as children (even though we’ll never admit it in person).

The contrast with how the world is today is hard to miss. Electronic devices have pretty much replaced the pacifier and are used to keep children quiet while the adults do literally anything except pay attention to them. The manipulative algorithms turn children into addicted zombies whose experience of the world is now almost exclusively gathered from a screen, all while the companies making the tech harvest crucial data about them to both better tune their addictive platforms and to sell to the highest bidder.

There are almost no longer any breaks from screens as tablets and laptops are very freely handed out by most schools for “educational purposes” before they’ve even learned some very basic things that used to be taught at that age. Parental controls still exist on devices, yet, even though children today are the first generation to have parents as tech-savvy as they are, they are somehow the least willing to do everything within their power to control their children’s digital footprint. The digital footprint that’s being harvested as a resource commodity by giant companies.

You don’t need to wait for the government to ban your children from social media.

We seem very focused on wanting governments to take action, yet, most people fail to realise that they already have the power to disconnect their own children. For one thing, why are we giving children smartphones in the first place? People are always surprised to learn that, for example, Nokia is still manufacturing cheap dumb phones so children can “call in case of an emergency”.

Setting up filters on tablets and laptops to block certain apps and sites is also easier than ever with lots of tutorials available online. Most importantly, teaching your children to be vigilant online and leading by example are free. If a child sees you waste two hours scrolling on social media, they will do the same. The entertainment provided by smartphones can be replaced by sports, music, art, reading, outings and many other things that either don’t require devices or can be done with a dedicated device like an MP3 player or a Kindle.

Yes, it’s true that children may do things behind your back when they’re not under your supervision. However, just like you trust them to not smoke if a friend offers them a cigarette he stole from his dad, they need to be trusted to not fall for such temptation either.

Banning social media for teens won’t work but risks being more damaginga

Banning social media for teens won’t work but risks being more damaging.

There are very good reasons why social media companies are actually the ones pushing and lobbying for this. Their business model is built on harvesting data to both sell to the highest bidder and to bombard the users with advertisements. Keep in mind that, on these platforms, if a product is free to use, then, in reality, you are the product. Now they have an excuse to add both ID card details and facial recognition to their datasets for sale.

They would also have these same pieces of data available to “accidentally leak” for everyone to see and steal. Yes, lawmakers could mandate that the data has to be scrubbed but there’s literally no way to enforce that before the damage is already irreversibly done.

As an adult ask yourself: Are you willing to risk such an exposure of your personal data? This is not like a bar where the barman simply reads your ID to hand you a drink, anything on the internet is there to stay and remains searchable with the right tools and know-how.

Social media harms adults just as much as children, if not more.

I don’t think I need to provide evidence for this. We all know people who ended up going down a social media rabbit hole only to emerge with a completely different (and oftentimes more radical) ideology than what they had even though it’s not even remotely representative of reality. On a societal level, the effect of social media on one adult is even more damaging than its effect on one child because adults can vote and can spend their own money.

Selectively banning children is simply a way for these companies to turn the dial up on their addictive algorithms while not being legally liable for harming children. The policy crackdown on social media companies needs to happen but by targeting the root of the problem: the addictive, echo-chamber algorithms. This is something that can be easily both mandated and enforced as it’s a simple statistical problem and that’s what politicians should focus on.

If adults are safeguarded, then children follow by default.

Jeremy Sacco

Jeremy Sacco is a physicist and an advocate for technological advancement in economic and energy sectors.