By Zeynep Tufekci / The New York Times
Instagram just announced “sweeping” changes to how it handles minors’ accounts, a belated acknowledgment that a social media platform that seeks to encourage engagement can have pernicious effects on children. Accounts whose owners self-identify as minors will now be private by default, stop notifications between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., and allow parent accounts to see who receives their children’s messages.
But these new policies will have little impact on many teenagers, because the platform has not set up age verification.
In response to Instagram’s new policy, many kids will simply create “finstas” — fake accounts — and carry on as before. Additionally, 16- and 17-year-olds will be able to opt out of these settings without needing parental approval. Anyone familiar with teenagers and the platform can see that Instagram’s new policy is less of a solution and more of a performance of doing something in response to public outcry.
Even these minor changes came only after dozens of lawsuits by state attorneys general and recent legislation aimed at protecting minors online that overwhelmingly passed in the Senate. In an age of polarization, such consensus is a strong indicator of how bothered the public is by all this.
While our new connected reality does have upsides, many teenagers suffer greatly from the constant judgment that characterizes social media platforms. And then there are the many documented cases of blackmail and exploitation of vulnerable youngsters.
Obviously, those best able to protect themselves from social media’s harms are going to be the young people who already have trusting relationships with their parents. Those kids are more likely to voluntarily self-identify as minors and now have slightly better default settings. But what about the rest of them?
Age verification is the kind of policy that would allow such changes to have widespread effect. But it’s not an easy fix. And it would certainly not be without major downsides, especially if it allowed a company to collect even more information on everyone. It also might overly stifle legitimate and necessary access to online information and speech. But those problems are potentially solvable in part by developing new technological approaches, if companies had the incentive to try.
So far, tech companies have little incentive to do much else besides belatedly change a few settings. Little else is likely to happen until Congress finally gets serious, resists the lobbying by these wealthy companies and puts some thoughtful effort into legislation with sharp enough teeth to force platforms to act.
Until then, the most vulnerable kids are still on their own.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times, c.2024.
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