Facebook parent company Meta is under fresh pressure for its effect on consumers, specifically children and teenagers. A recent settlement that claimed its products led to dangerous and addictive social media usage has raised concerns about the obligations of the tech giant, and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, who has been at the helm of the company since its inception.
The settlement is more than just a monetary settlement in a court case. It’s a far wider reflection of a discussion about how designers of technology companies create digital products and what they are responsible for when those products involve harmful behavior. Although this settlement does not resolve the ongoing scientific dispute whether social media should be termed addictive or not, it has certainly brought attention to the design of these platforms, how their recommendation systems function and how companies react when they are forced to listen to growing concerns about the health and wellbeing of their users.
Mark Zuckerberg has been a key player in Meta’s incredible journey. It started as a University social networking project, and became one of the most powerful technology businesses in the world. Facebook grew quickly and Instragram and WhatsApp were the acquisitions that boosted the company’s reach. The company was subsequently rebranded as Meta as Zuckerberg focused on a new vision for digital and virtual experiences.
The expansion has generated vast monetary wealth and also sparked controversy on a regular basis. Meta has been criticized for privacy policies, misinformation, political influence, online harassment, content moderation and impact of social media on younger users. The controversies have all contributed to the debate regarding the business interests of the company and the broader interests of the people that use their platforms.
The worries about Meta didn’t come out of nowhere. The impact of social media on citizen behavior and society has been the subject of study for over ten years, research, study, and discussion by researchers, journalists, policy makers and civil society groups. The algorithms behind what users see have been spotlighted during election campaigns and the Brexit referendum due to political debates about misinformation. The conversation began to shift slightly from the posts and accounts to a more complex question: what is the effect of the technology itself on people’s beliefs, what do people read, watch and share?
The core of the problem lies in the recommendation systems of today’s social networks. Posts aren’t just sorted in neutral order for the user. Algorithms look at signals like past activity, interactions, viewing patterns and predicted interests to decide what content to keep someone engaged or interested. There is value in this system because when people engage more, they will be able to be monetized in other ways and monetized more, of course, as advertising is one of those ways.
It’s not inherently bad to try to make something interesting or useful. The difficulty comes in when engagement is a key metric in achieving success. A system aimed at maintaining user engagement might promote sensationalist, controversial or emotional material as it can evoke strong emotional responses. What makes a person find a video funny may make another person find a more extreme or misleading video.
The concern becomes more delicate if the children or the teenagers are directly affected. Whether or not they are emotionally, socially and psychologically developed, young people may be more susceptible to social pressure, comparison and compulsive online behaviors. With features like constant notifications, personalized recommendations, public reactions, and endless scrolling, it can be hard for some users to see when “ordinary entertainment” has become “excessive use.
That’s why there are more and more parallels being drawn between social media and tobacco. It is important to note that this is not a literal comparison as the products and risks are quite distinct from one another. While smoking has harmful health effects, social media can offer real benefits. People can communicate, promote business, learn, get communities and keep relationships through digital platforms, regardless of geographical barriers.
However, there is a question of responsibility in the tobacco analogy. Eventually society came to the conclusion that consumers could not be expected to take the whole burden of managing risks related to a product that was widely available. Age restrictions, health warnings, public education, and where smoking could happen were instituted by governments. The key message of the wider lesson is that product design and corporate responsibility can have an impact, in addition to consumer choice.
Restrictions for teens are a good example of how the balance can get complicated. Restricting overnight access, lowering notifications and providing more control to parents could help families curb overuse of social media. This could also be a disadvantage if age checks are not enforced on sites not created for children, as it would make it more difficult for younger children to access.
But limitations can bring new challenges. The age verification process can involve gathering more personal data, which can create privacy concerns.Companies might need to obtain extra personal information during the age verification procedure, causing legitimate privacy concerns. Limiting screen time can also give a false sense of the online experiences of young people. Two teens could spend the same time on the same platform, but see entirely different content. Some may view educational videos and interact with friends and others may repeatedly view material about self-image, dangerous behavior, or other harmful material.
Content recommendation is one of the toughest problems for technology companies, however. Content about drugs, gambling, sexual exploitation, dangerous challenges, conspiracy and public-health misinformation are all examples of harmful material. If users remain being re-directed to similar content in the future, they may not like it even after the posts are removed. Moderation is therefore more than just finding and removing inappropriate content. It also entails comprehending the interaction between various content components and the bigger recommendation environment.
Meta has been criticized in a few other areas that also elicit concerns about corporate responsibility. Public trust has been challenged by privacy breaches and security issues on numerous occasions, and misinformation and hate speech have posed challenges for the company’s moderation tools. These issues are challenging because billions of interactions occur across various languages, cultures and legal systems on Meta’s platforms.
