While social media firms have long faced scrutiny from Congress and civil rights organizations over their impact on young users, the new wave of lawsuits underscores how parents are increasingly leading the charge, said Jim Steyer, an attorney and founder of Common Sense media, a non-profit that advocates for children’s online safety.
“This is a major shift from where we were a decade ago,” he said. “People see the impact on their own children, they know the platforms are intentionally designed to addict their kids into harmful stuff, and they are fed up. The tide has turned.”
Good! We need to hold these companies accountable. Around the mid 2010s they realized that it’s more profitable to have addicts instead of users. Casinos, bars, and cigarette sellers are forbidden from selling to children. These addictive platforms should be subject to similar limitations
Whenever one of these stories come up, there’s always a lot of discussion about whether these suits are reasonable or fair or whether it’s really legally the companies’ fault and so on. If that’s your inclination, I propose that you consider it from the other side: Big companies use every tool in their arsenal to get what they want, regardless of whether it’s right or fair or good. If we want to take them on, we have to do the same. We call it a justice system, but in reality it’s just a fight over who gets to wield the state’s monopoly of violence to coerce other people into doing what they want, and any notions of justice or fairness are window dressing. That’s how power actually works. It doesn’t care about good faith vs bad faith arguments, and we can’t limit ourselves to only using our institutions within their veneer of rule of law when taking on powerful, exclusively self-interested, and completely antisocial institutions with no such scruples.
The thing about social media companies is we all have one important power. Just uninstall the app. I agree they suck in so many ways.
Kids though… There are a few things that make me glad I do not have any. Cell phones and social media. They just seem problematic. Not sure anyone under the age of 16 should have either or be on an unfiltered net connection.
Really no one that does not know the standard net rule of block and move on and never share PII should be on the net. I would hope that a 16 year old would know that but maybe not.
Very sad.
