By University of East Anglia
Image: Mariia Berezovsky - Unsplash.
New Meta measures may deepen inequalities by shifting responsibility onto parents and young people – according to an expert at the University of East Anglia.
The tech giant has agreed to a historic $18 billion settlement with dozens of US states, bringing an end to a high-profile federal trial.
The lawsuit accused Meta of deliberately designing addictive platforms that harmed children's mental health.
The proposed settlement introduces new youth safeguards, but social media expert Dr Harry Dyer says that such measures may deepen digital inequalities.
Dr Harry Dyer, Associate Professor in Education at the School of Education and Lifelong Learning at UEA, said: “Meta has spent a long time insisting that their product is safe for young people, despite the large amount of research that has detailed online harms for children.
“Whilst the settlement allows Meta to deny wrongdoing, it also suggests that there is a clear need to change their platforms and also suggests they were reluctant to continue with the public transparency that the trial would continue to bring.
“The proposed changes to the platform as part of the settlement include default daily time limits of two hours and nighttime blocks for users that are deemed to be under 18 by the platform, which will seemingly only be liftable by parents.
“Whilst this is promising, our recent work has revealed that engaging with these platforms as a parent require a high level of digital literacy and citizenship from parents and children.
“Our recent work has found that the burden of understanding these platforms mapped onto existing class and educational inequalities, and exacerbated harms on the most vulnerable young people.
“The proposed protections by Meta will likely not be evenly distributed and will also likely be linked to different level of cultural and technological capital.
“As usual, users are being made responsible to navigate these changes, and to make informed choices about which design features are better, whilst the platform evades the accountability that an ongoing trail would likely bring. Structural risk here gets repackaged as individual responsibility for parents and children to navigate.”
Reviewed by Irfan Ahmad.
Read next:
• Consumers Are More Likely to Use Free AI Chatbots Than Paid Versions
• 92% of Netflix Users Also Use YouTube, While About 16% of YouTube Users Also Use Netflix
New Meta measures may deepen inequalities by shifting responsibility onto parents and young people – according to an expert at the University of East Anglia.
The tech giant has agreed to a historic $18 billion settlement with dozens of US states, bringing an end to a high-profile federal trial.
The lawsuit accused Meta of deliberately designing addictive platforms that harmed children's mental health.
The proposed settlement introduces new youth safeguards, but social media expert Dr Harry Dyer says that such measures may deepen digital inequalities.
Dr Harry Dyer, Associate Professor in Education at the School of Education and Lifelong Learning at UEA, said: “Meta has spent a long time insisting that their product is safe for young people, despite the large amount of research that has detailed online harms for children.
“Whilst the settlement allows Meta to deny wrongdoing, it also suggests that there is a clear need to change their platforms and also suggests they were reluctant to continue with the public transparency that the trial would continue to bring.
“The proposed changes to the platform as part of the settlement include default daily time limits of two hours and nighttime blocks for users that are deemed to be under 18 by the platform, which will seemingly only be liftable by parents.
“Whilst this is promising, our recent work has revealed that engaging with these platforms as a parent require a high level of digital literacy and citizenship from parents and children.
“Our recent work has found that the burden of understanding these platforms mapped onto existing class and educational inequalities, and exacerbated harms on the most vulnerable young people.
“The proposed protections by Meta will likely not be evenly distributed and will also likely be linked to different level of cultural and technological capital.
“As usual, users are being made responsible to navigate these changes, and to make informed choices about which design features are better, whilst the platform evades the accountability that an ongoing trail would likely bring. Structural risk here gets repackaged as individual responsibility for parents and children to navigate.”
Reviewed by Irfan Ahmad.
Read next:
• Consumers Are More Likely to Use Free AI Chatbots Than Paid Versions
• 92% of Netflix Users Also Use YouTube, While About 16% of YouTube Users Also Use Netflix
