Amidst a trend of digital protectionism worldwide, social networking site Meta is desperately asking parents to choose its ‘Teen Accounts’ and upgraded monitoring services over total bans imposed by governments around the world on children using their social networking sites.
The latest country that has joined this list is Turkey. The Turkish government has introduced a new law prohibiting social networking sites for any person below the age of 15. This new development comes amid pressure by the president, who has labelled some applications as cesspools that corrupt young minds. Once signed into law by the president, platforms such as Instagram and Threads will have to enforce a strict age verification system.
However, Turkey is not the only country doing this. Australia has taken the lead in banning the use of social media networks for anyone below 16 years old, with other countries including France, Greece and Spain pursuing legislation to ban social networking sites for children. In addition, in India, the government will soon introduce legislation to restrict the use of social networks based on age verification through Aadhaar numbers.
As a response to this pressure, Meta is now changing its approach from trying to convince governments to working on convincing guardians. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg just launched a new ‘Insights’ section where parents can get information about the topics their kids discuss with Meta AI — anything from homework to health issues. Moreover, default content filters are now set up for teenagers’ use on Meta apps, similar to 13+ movies.
Despite all this, many people doubt that these changes will be successful. Though the company tries to claim that the newly introduced tools will give more power to families, it is very easy for the young generation to overcome the imposed limitations with the help of a good-old-fashioned VPN. Even though Mark tries to present Meta as a friend of the kids, the situation shows how little trust there is in Silicon Valley.
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