Meta's fix for teen online mental health? Hold Apple and Google responsible

Meta, which stands accused in multiple lawsuits of ignoring the mental health toll its services have taken on teens and children, is finally calling for change – on the part of Apple and Google. The headset and ad biz has voiced support for a federal law that would require app stores – mainly Apple's App Store and Google Play …

[Dan 55]

Section 230 ruling

Luckily there was a case in California this week which ruled that "but Section 230" is not a valid defence when it comes to children's mental health. So Facebook can finally stop blaming everyone else and start getting its house in order.

[DS999]

That's hardly a solution

I guess they forgot that people on PCs use the web - and that's also available as an option on a phone if parents have blocked the app from being downloaded.

[Snake]

Re: That's hardly a solution

It is hardly a solution because, now that I've been forced on to the social media networks, I see adults being addicted to the toxic narcissism and endorphin rush of Meta services. They just can't put the dog-damn thing down. Posting their tiniest little activities to get the reaction feedback. If you are beautiful enough - read, focus solely on how your body appears to the outside world - posting nothing but pictures of yourself in various poses to get those views. Asking for attention and recognition.

And worse, the Meta apps are intentionally designed, via oblique and malformed interfaces, to keep you on the app for as damn long as possible. Letting you know that 326 complete and utter strangers viewed your post, without comment, as if you could do anything about it at all. Clicking into Messenger...and having to, quite intentionally, scroll down to find the unanswered messages instead of doing the most obvious thing of automatically popping new messages to the top of the feed. Telling you that someone has a post that 'might be of interest', when there's nothing there reflecting you personally at all.

It's completely toxic and a very intentional waste of your time. But that's their entire plan: keep you there, wasting time, all the while feeding you ads or gathering yet more profile telemetry so that they can sell it to the next advertiser who bothers to ask.

Kill it. Kill it all. The world would be a better place without all this fake "social" media which only really allows everyone's worst personality traits to show up, unchecked.

[quartzz]

the BBC have an article about this - non commentable

my first thought "Meta decides to hold someone else responsible for stuff"

[Jason Bloomberg]

Indeed. And they are not going to give up on 'victim blaming' while it remains an option.

[jake]

Support for a federal law? Eh? It already exists.

Here in the US, children are not allowed to enter into a contract without parental consent. This means that, by law, kids are not allowed to agree to the terms and conditions (or whatever they call it) for ANY of the online services, unless a parent or guardian expressly allows it.

One of these days, somebody far more important than I am will point out this simple fact, and the shit will hit the fan.

During the meanwhile, if parents would actually parent we wouldn't be having this discussion ... but that's politically incorrect.

[Zebranky]

Re: Support for a federal law? Eh? It already exists.

I agree with you Jake, that parents should actually parent and that for some reason this is a very unpopular opinion, leading to parents being progressively stripped of their abilities and rights to parenting.

Give a 3-year-old a smack on the bottom as an immediate consequence of their narrowly avoided attempt to run straight out into the road in front of oncoming traffic? 'Oh Noes you can’t abuse child for almost getting run over, you have to have a conversation with the 3 year old and acknowledge their feelings and how they really wanted to pet that strange rabid looking dog on the other side of the road, I'm calling social services...'

Ignore a 4-year-old throwing a tantrum on the floor of the supermarket and moving to the next aisle? ‘Oh Noes, you can’t abandon your child like that, you should be acknowledging their feelings and soothing their tantrum by giving them all the lollies they want, I'm calling social services...'

Combine these kind of Karen incidents with the other breakdowns occurring in our society, like in order to simply make ends meet both parents have to hold a full-time job, so the parent simply isn’t available for parenting.

The breakdown of communities in some places where many people don’t even know their neighbours’ names (It used to be said it takes a village to raise a child, now people are frightened of their local 'village')

Schools being stripped of the ability to provide guidance and discipline in the absence of the village. (I agree that Schools being used as child minders and having to pick up the slack where parents are not parenting is horrifying, but it is what is happening)

And finally most disconcerting of all, the groups if individuals who now think all of the above is absolutely normal and correct and will actually get aggressive towards anyone who dares suggest that they need to step in and discipline/parent their child...

It all just makes the entire situation depressing for the future generations, I'm glad my kids are grown, I no longer have to deal with this, but I worry about what is going to happen for their kids.

I personally am of the opinion that unfettered capitalism where the rule 1 is "profits come before everything else" and rule 2 is “see rule 1” is a root cause of many of these problems, and Meta definitely up there with the bad offenders in this respect so this little song and dance routine of theirs is simply a new way of distracting lawmakers from legitimately enforcing existing laws that you correctly point out could be used for enforcement. I am certain that in 5 years these companies will still be operating with impunity and nothing will have changed.

[Cliffwilliams44]

Re: Support for a federal law? Eh? It already exists.

I agreed with you up until your last paragraph.

Blaming capitalism for this is just an excuse because you cannot blame the real culprit! Capitalism existed for centuries. Centuries where we did not have these issues. The real culprit is the degradation of the family and parenting in general that has been perpetrated by the Left. Primarily because the family and the parent gets in the way of their socioeconomic goals.

The problem with Meta, et. all, is that Parents do not exercise their capitalistic rights to avoid doing business with these companies. Why? Because the phone, tablet, computer, TV had become the DeFacto babysitter. Which is a factor in the rise of Autism and Achbergers syndromes in children today.

If it can be proven that these services are causing harm to people, then they should be sued by the Consumer Product Safety Commission in the US and their equivalent in other countries.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Support for a federal law? Eh? It already exists.

What a fascinating fantasy world you live in.

Certainly it's one blissfully free of knowledge about the history of family structures and relations.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Support for a federal law? Eh? It already exists.

During the meanwhile, if parents would actually parent we wouldn't be having this discussion ... but that's politically incorrect.

You do understand that a mobile phone (or celular phone as you call them in the colonies) can be used by the offspring when the parents aren't around? It's not a TV in the corner of the living room. It ain't the 80s any more.

The rules may say they the phone stays in the living room when they go to bed or the router can cut off Internet access according to a timetable, so the remaining things today's parents have to deal with but aren't allowed to because Apple, Google, and social media won't let them are (off the top of my head):

1. Built-in social media apps which can't be removed.

2. Any free app can be downloaded anyway from the store.

3. These apps may have parental controls in their settings but these controls can just as easily be removed again.

4. No second password to allow parents to get past lock screen.

5. No "parent mode" admin settings for either the phone or apps.

6. No way of stopping as many new social media accounts being created on the phone as required - account creation shouldn't be an option in "kid mode".

7. Ability to restrict to one predefined login in "kid mode" or at the very least tell the parents what accounts IDs are being used to log in.

8. No "parent mode" login into social media accounts belonging to their children.

Google and Apple need to be fined repeatedly until they come up with a built-in non bypassable parent mode with actually useful options instead of a three or four useless handwavey features to keep criticism off their back and social media corps must also be fined repeatedly until their apps also have a parent mode (in an ideal world the host OS would tell apps what mode to run in).

But, yeah, just tell the patents they gotta parent when the entire data slurp/social media economy is based on infinite growth and reeling them in when they're young to achieve that.

[LybsterRoy]

Re: Support for a federal law? Eh? It already exists.

Peer pressure and all that - kids gotta have a smartphone - WHY?

[Dinanziame]

Re: Support for a federal law? Eh? It already exists.

My kid receives instructions from teachers about homework and upcoming tests by a combination of Microsoft Teams and WhatsApp.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Support for a federal law? Eh? It already exists.

By the time they're 14 if they don't have a smartphone then they can't talk to their friends who arrange to meet each other with text messages or WhatsApp. Or they're Amish.

Presumably someone will be along now to say they should be playing with a hoop and stick in the streets and confidently stating all you got to do is parent better like they did three decades ago.

[jmch]

Re: Support for a federal law? Eh? It already exists.

"Google and Apple need to be fined repeatedly until they come up with a built-in non bypassable parent mode..."

There are plenty of good apps that do that and much much more, they don't need to be inbuilt. Too many parents simply can't be bothered

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Support for a federal law? Eh? It already exists.

There are plenty of good apps that do that and much much more, they don't need to be inbuilt. Too many parents simply can't be bothered

I installed paid-for Qustodio. It can be uninstalled by removing the device administrator permissions via adb. That's why it has to be built in.

[doublelayer]

Re: Support for a federal law? Eh? It already exists.

If a child learns enough to use ADB to disable that overlay, they're likely to know plenty of other ways to do whatever they want on that or other computers. ADB use is not that common for kids, or for that matter adults, and if they're going to do it, it requires another computer on which they could probably do whatever the phone is blocked from doing. This is really not a realistic concern for how such a feature could be disabled, and if this is really concerning to you, you might suggest that the provider of the overlay blocks the ability to change developer settings, therefore preventing the child from authorizing a computer for ADB control in the first place.

This is not a convincing argument for why the device needs to have special software baked in for parenting reasons. No desktop computer has it either. Even if you're the kind of parent who builds a customized Linux image that has very specific permissions set up, it wouldn't prevent some child from theoretically finding an exploit that allows them to escalate their permissions and disable your work, but that this is possible doesn't justify requiring someone else to write it for you.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Support for a federal law? Eh? It already exists.

This is not a convincing argument for why the device needs to have special software baked in for parenting reasons.

A mobile device by definition is not near the parent. If the device doesn't have a comprehensive set of parental controls and parental controls apps are imperfect and easily worked around, how do you expect parents to actually parent?

ADB use is not that common for kids, or for that matter adults

Are you under the impression kids don't talk to each other and "Install Platform Tools, connect to phone, open a terminal, type this" is too complicated for them?

it wouldn't prevent some child from theoretically finding an exploit that allows them to escalate their permissions and disable your work

A zero-day exploit is one thing, being hamstrung by the architecture because the OS manufacturer is paying lip service to parental controls is another.

The same lack of parental controls happen with Chromebooks, if it's a school Chromebook or your Chromebook set up to be administered by the school on first login with the school account, you just can't set up any parental controls yourself.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Support for a federal law? Eh? It already exists.

Are you under the impression kids don't talk to each other and "Install Platform Tools, connect to phone, open a terminal, type this" is too complicated for them?

AIUI, doublelayer is under the impression that when a kid gets to that stage of competence and incentive — of bothering to find those instructions and carry them out — then they're more than prepared to bypass some similar "built-in" restriction. On that device, or some other. And that seems like a rather probable conclusion to me as well.

[doublelayer]

Re: Support for a federal law? Eh? It already exists.

"If the device doesn't have a comprehensive set of parental controls and parental controls apps are imperfect and easily worked around, how do you expect parents to actually parent?"

The way they have for a long time: instead of finding a magical way to make it impossible for their child to do something they don't want them to do, taking reasonable steps to make it difficult and explaining to the child why they should not attempt to bypass those measures. It's not perfect, but nothing is. Depending on your tolerance for your children doing things, you are free to find a parental control application that does block ADB registration, and I know this is possible. Other parents, in my experience a majority, won't install any such app at all. I'm not convinced that you will get better results with your stringent measures than they will. I am not responsible for ensuring the tools you want to exist really exist. Nor are device manufacturers.

"Are you under the impression kids don't talk to each other and "Install Platform Tools, connect to phone, open a terminal, type this" is too complicated for them?"

In my experience, yes, it is too complicated for quite a lot of them. However, I know some will learn to do that. If they do, I expect that they won't have much trouble finding other paths around software restrictions, even if the ADB method is blocked, and therefore I think they must be handled differently. At some point, technical restrictions become ineffective and something else must be used. You are free to keep relying on technical solutions, but since they will always be somewhat imperfect, there may be better ways than a technical arms race.

[schultzter]

Re: Support for a federal law? Eh? It already exists.

I installed Google Family and it works great on the kid's Android devices, partially on the Chromebook, breaks the Chromecast, and not at all on the school devices (iPad, Chromebook, and Windows).

So until there is interoperability for any and all platforms I'm not interested in any technical solutions (and I'm relatively comfortable with technology).

[jwatkins]

Re: Support for a federal law? Eh? It already exists.

Google Family "controls" stop working when they are 13. They don't work if you have non-google.com/gmail.com accounts either.

[Snowy]

Won't someone think of the adults!

<quote>Meta, which stands accused in multiple lawsuits of ignoring the mental health toll its services have taken on teens and children, is finally calling for change – on the part of Apple and Google.</quote>

No one suing them for ignoring the mental health toll its services have taken on adults!!

[jake]

Re: Won't someone think of the adults!

Actual adults never subscribed to metaface in the first place.

[KarMann]

Re: Won't someone think of the adults!

FYI, try < blockquote>this< /blockquote>, minus those spaces.

The more you know.

[Snowy]

Re: Won't someone think of the adults!

Thank you

Pint for you ---->

[Potemkine!]

So Feckbook is now a philanthropic organisation

. "At the heart of these accusations is this idea that we prioritize profit over safety and well-being," he wrote. "That's just not true."

Oh, ok. he says he doesn't do that for money but for the greater good so then it must be true, let's believe him he is such a good guy . Why wouldn't anyone believe Facebook first objective is not well-being but making profit instead? I mean, unless being not totally idiotic?

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: So Feckbook is now a philanthropic organisation

You just need to infer the remainder.

"That's just not true. Safety and well-being were never on the list at all."

[schultzter]

Age verification?!

I am afraid of the mechanics of age verification and would probably be more comfortable circumventing it than providing the necessary info!

[JustJeff]

This isn't a fix

So the way around all this is a child to use the web version of FB. Kids are smart enough to figure this out.

Did they even think this out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jonathan Haidt on the founders of “social media”

In a talk, Jonathan Haidt said something to the effect that “social media” reflects the psychology of the founders - border-line Asperger cases. I typed the talk up and posted it on “social media”. It was taken down, my account banned and all my old posts erased - how very Orwellian.

Yer “social media” account is basically an addiction machine. Continuous stimulation to keep them coming back. Leading to a heightened sense of anxiety that can only be satiated by more “social media” .

Jonathan Haidt: The Case Against Social Media (01:42:05)

The dark psychology of social networks

[Ian Johnston]

They want parents to take some responsibility for their children's wellbeing? That's a pretty tall order.