As concerns about social media's harmful effects on teens continue to rise, platforms from Snapchat to TikTok to Instagram are bolting on new features they say will make their services safer and more age appropriate. But the changes rarely address the elephant in the the room — the algorithms pushing endless content that can drag anyone, not just teens, into harmful rabbit holes.
People are also reading… Take, for instance, Snapchat, which on Tuesday introduced new parental controls in what it calls the"Family Center" — a tool that lets parents see who their teens are messaging, though not the content of the messages themselves. One catch: Both parents and their children have to opt into to the service.
These conversations, experts agree, are important. In an ideal world, parents would regularly sit down with their kids and have honest talks about social media and the dangers and pitfalls of the online world. The new controls, Golin said, also fail to address a myriad of existing problems with Snapchat. These range from kids misrepresenting their ages to"compulsive use" encouraged by the app's Snapstreak feature to cyberbullying made easier by the disappearing messages that still serve as Snapchat's claim to fame.
Child safety and teen mental health are front and center in both Democratic and Republicans critiques of tech companies. States, which have been much more aggressive about regulating technology companies than the federal government, are also turning their attention to the matter. In March, several state attorneys general launched a nationwide investigation into TikTok and its possible harmful effects on young users' mental health.
Instagram, which is owned by Facebook parent Meta, is the second most popular app with teens, Pew found, with 62% saying they use it, followed by Snapchat with 59%. Not surprisingly, only 32% of teens reported ever having used Facebook, down from 71% in 2014 and 2015, according to the report.
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