Ban Books or Ban Algorithms?

It’s a paradox that schools and libraries are banning books deemed to be harmful for kids but content on the Internet has few restrictions. With a click and search, children can ferret out links to the banned books, plus a whole bunch more.

This week legislators in 40 states and the District of Columbia  sued Meta — which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger — claiming they violated consumer protection laws by ensnaring children and deceiving users about the safety of its platforms. A similar bill made its way through the California legislature last year but was stayed when a federal judge ruled on a counter lawsuit filed by the tech giants, including TikTok.

As this latest challenge to the rights of media companies (FCC, section 230) versus children’s media begins, BeMobileSmart jumps ahead to the claims that social media companies will use. They are likely to argue that there are sufficient controls today and the management of social media rests with parental supervision, librarians, and educators. They may illustrate that their sites are carefully constructed to include time, and content controls. Meanwhile, we will look here at the polar extreme to Section 230: decrees made by the Chinese government to control youth and teen Internet use. The irony is that the Chinese company owns TikTok, one of the most “addictive” sites for young people has already made a public showing to say that they limit users time on the site.

1. Amount of screen time:  Screentime gets a lot of attention because it is a quantifiable number that can be reported.  Both phones and computers have software that set these limits. And social media accounts have their own counters to advise users if they exceed a time allotment. Parents can also take a more draconian step and shut down the household WiFi to restrict access. More often, parents use screen time as a negotiating tool, say a reward for completing homework or doing chores.

China, in contrast, decreed this year that kids under eight can only use smart devices for 40 minutes every day and only consume content about “elementary education, hobbies and interests, and liberal arts education”. When they turn eight, they graduate to 60 minutes of screen time and “entertainment content with positive guidance. The prescribed time allotment increases with age. We don’t know if kids find a work-around, but it may deter parents from being able to use screen time as a reward.

2. Age limits: In principle, social media accounts and YouTube Video have restrictions for new users. However, it only takes a modicum of math for a child to subtract the number 13 from today’s date and establish their eligibility. In many cases, parents seem to know about the age restrictions but still go online to view with their children or help them set up accounts. Various sources estimate that 40% or more of children under age 13 use social media.

China, notably, began an age curfew on online gaming in 2019 and expanded it in 2021.  Like other information from there, we do not know how they enforce this.

3. Age appropriate content: This is one of the most difficult areas to regulate, since there are no standards of what makes content age-appropriate. Despite that, adults in other arenas, like book banning, set guidelines. Social media accounts use algorithms that are trained to spot nudity, sex, violence, offensive language, and unsocial behaviors. It has been known for some time that the algorithms are fallible and very young children are exposed to very offensive content. 

China, meanwhile, has said they will require software to build a “minor mode” into their product but it is not clear that it is successful and can reestrict the type of content that is displayed. Their software would also have to tailor their content for different age groups. We do not know whether precocious children and teens learn to bypass it. 

4. Privacy and Customization: The Children’s Online Privacy Protect Rule (COPPA)  restricts companies from selling personal data for children under thirteen. Might these companies, behind the scenes, create a profile before a child reaches thirteen and then sell it when they come of age?  Facebook says it limits ways in which advertisers can profile Instagram users under age 18. Instead of tracking their specific  interests gleaned via data collection, advertisers can now only broadly group them by age, gender, and location. (Note: a combination of age/gender/and location can create a  rich and detailed database.) 

5. Tagging, Likes and Followers:  In many ways, tags, likes, and followers are at the “heart” of social media- what makes it unique and what might also make it addictive and compromising to users. What makes social media, well social, are the followers, the tags, and the likes. In Australia, Canada and New Zealand, Facebook tested removing ‘likes’ from user’s Instagram content.

Today, Instagram claims it provides controls in Settings to manage some of these features.  Users can choose the audience that can link to their stories and decide who tags them. In an account is private only approved followers can see the photo or video and the person who is tagged gets a notification only if they are following you. However, this does not keep photos and posts from being shared outside, since friends can repost the material elsewhere and materials are not watermarked. Moreover, depending upon the privacy settings, Facebook retains the right to use any photos for their own purposes.

6. Live Streaming:  One of the most bingeable aspects of media time is live streaming. Streaming represents a relatively new category that is at the heart of concerns about digital addiction and Internet related disorders. There is concern that streaming programs and online gaming proeduce changes that take place in the brain and physiological reward systems. In addition, live streaming introduces ethical problems when young people, wittingly or unwittingly, shame,  harass or bully their peers. 

China’s focus on controlling streaming, specifically online gaming, began in 2018. Their first decree was that  teens ages 16 to 18 needed permission from their parents or guardians before doing live streams. Minors are also banned from placing bets online and they have proposed additional restrictions this year.

7. Going Viral = Celebrity Status. Finally, it is hard to dismiss the fact that more than 50 percent of teens today say that they want to grow up to be a social media influencer.  They harbor this career path over more traditional careers.

One of the more insidious problems with is how influencer status can be tweaked. Oddly, a Chinese company, employees of TikTok social media, have come forward to reveal that in the U.S. market they can manually “heat” certain videos to make users go viral. In other words hand-picked content can rise to the top and create further confusion about what appears in a feed and what is hidden.

A Framework for Digital Training: Provisional Licenses

What’s the path for teens and preteens once the Congressional hearings on social media wrap up?  Ideas are likely to come from the transportation field.  There will be talk about using guardrails to keep social media in its place and slow down users. And then there will be a push towards civic education and instruction.  

So, a provisional digital license/phone  may sound suitable and it is something I have campaigned for over a number of years. Before we let kids go online, they need to be fortified with targeted classroom instruction, parental guidance, and real-time experience- just like in driver’s education. Earning a phone is not automatic– kids commit to doing the homework and completing challenges before they are safe on their own.

As in motoring, it takes a decade or longer after a technology emerges for the instructional need to be recognized. It was not until 1932 that drivers education classes were taught in the U.S.  For digital education, it has taken nearly 12 years after the initial iPhone  for digital education to get mandated.

Curriculums:

Today, just four states have a mandate for this: Texas, Delaware, New Jersey and California. In principle, California has begun the framework for a provisional license. It requires the state’s Instructional Quality Commission to slowly roll out a curriculum framework  while considering how to incorporate media literacy content into English language arts, math, science, history and social science lessons. 

But, if we are going to have an effective program in digital education, we might want to borrow some more ideas from driver’s education. 

In the following table, I compare the two programs on some basics: