As countries ban social media for kids, Meta talks straight to parents. business News & more related News Here

Even though Turkey has joined the list of countries that intend to ban social media access for children and teens, Meta which finds itself most affected is again trying to convince parents that its teen account proposal is safe. Turkish lawmakers passed a bill this week that includes restricting social media access for children under 15, marking a continuation of a global trend to protect children from often dangerous activity on these platforms. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan now has 15 days to accept this bill, after which it will become law.

The bill would force Meta’s social media platforms including Facebook, Threads and Instagram, as well as other social media companies including X, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, Twitch, Kik, Reddit, the band Snapchat, to install age-verification systems and comprehensive parental controls. Governments also expect social media companies to respond to and remove content deemed harmful to children and the broader social fabric. Adding artificial intelligence (AI) chat features within these apps adds another layer of potentially dangerous complexity.

“We are living in an era where some digital sharing applications are corrupting the minds of our children and social media platforms, to put it bluntly, have become garbage dumps,” Erdogan said in a televised address in Turkey this week, before lawmakers passed the bill, mincing no words. Turkey is not the only country concerned about the risks and pressures young adults face on social media platforms, with cases of suicide, cyberbullying, addiction and exposure to violent content frequently recorded here.

For example, in 2024, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was asked by lawmakers in the US why Meta allowed drug dealers to post ads on the company’s social media platforms – a report by the watchdog group Tech Transparency Project found more than 450 ads selling pharmaceuticals and other drugs on Instagram and Facebook.

Türkiye’s move sparked a global response to the sharing of often uncontrolled content on social media, which is otherwise incredibly easy to access. In December Australia became the first country to ban social media for children under 16. In January, France passed a bill to ban social media access for children 15 and under. Greece has already announced a ban on social media apps for anyone under 15 from January next year. Indonesia and Malaysia have banned entry for anyone under 16, while Germany, Poland, Spain and the UK are also imposing restrictions.

The Indian government is expected to propose a tiered approach to limit social media access based on age groups up to the age of 18, with a focus on implementing age verification using Aadhaar verification and verifiable parental consent. Despite years of efforts, content regulation on social media has never succeeded to the extent that these platforms can be considered safe for children.

While it is clear that social media companies would oppose any restrictions in access to their platforms, as it is the user base numbers, eyeballs and revenue that they gain, they have been forced to respond to restrictions imposed in many countries, as others are considering similar steps.

In the days before the ban in Australia, Meta swung into action and disabled over 550,000 accounts it suspected were related to minors, and installed a new content filtering system inspired by movie ratings. YouTube has disabled more than one million accounts linked to minors globally, and continues to argue that it is not technically a social media company. TikTok also shut down more than 200,000 accounts in Australia alone, while Snapchat saw its teen user base drop by 14% following Australia’s ban.

Meta makes a proposal to parents

Even as most countries ban social media platforms for children, which particularly hurts Meta, the company is now trying to convince parents that reinforced tools for them to monitor kids’ social media accounts can get the job done. This week, they’ve announced detailed information about their child’s use of Meta AI, and it’s now being rolled out to parents overseeing teen accounts in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and Brazil – with a global rollout expected in the coming weeks.

“Parents using Supervision on Facebook, Messenger or Instagram will now see a new Insights tab within Supervision, both in-app and on the web. From there, parents will be able to see the topics their teens were asking the Meta AI about in that specific app in the past week. Topics can range from school, entertainment and lifestyle to travel, writing, and health and wellness,” the company said in a statement.

Earlier this month, Meta updated Instagram Teen Accounts with reportedly stronger safeguards defining age-appropriate content that appears on teen users’ feeds. First of all, Meta says that the content filter is driven by 13+ movie rating criteria and original feedback by default. Second, teens will no longer be able to follow accounts that are known to regularly share age-inappropriate content, or if their name or biography suggests the account is inappropriate for teens.

But then, Meta also cautioned that no system is perfect and parents should continue to provide feedback.

Governments in many countries are attempting to keep children away from the risks by restricting access to social media, but there is a risk of VPNs, or Virtual Private Networks, being used to circumvent these restrictions by spoofing the user’s location. There is also the reality of bypassing social media platforms for apps like WhatsApp and Telegram, where mini communities turn to social networks to share the same type of content that might otherwise be shared on Instagram or TikTok or Snapchat.

An example of this comes from the UK’s Online Safety Act, which was implemented in July last year, mandating age-checking on web platforms. ProtonVPN reported a 1400% hourly increase in new user registrations, while NordVPN reported a 1000% increase in subscriptions from UK-based users. In March this year, analytics firm Apptopia reported that daily active VPN sessions in Australia had reached 1.32 million since age restrictions were implemented.