Educational partnerships with Girl Scouts, Sesame Street will teach children to use tech in moderation
Meta and Google have established partnerships with well-known children’s organisations such as Highlights magazine, Girl Scouts, and Sesame Street – with the aim of teaching children to use technology in moderation.
This comes as tech platforms face legal challenges which allege that social networking sites are addictive by design, putting children at risk. A California jury recently found that YouTube and Meta platforms were negligent in the operation of products which harmed children and teenagers, failing to warn them of the dangers of use.
The two tech giants are now investing tens of millions of dollars, Reuters reports, into organising and delivering lessons in responsible tech use. Parents and children will be able to access catchy songs, colourful magazines, and popular characters all delivering a message of personal responsibility.
Collaborations with trusted brands are garnering criticism alleging that the platforms are simply finding a new way to encourage children to use social media under the guise of a more responsible approach.
The Reuters report outlines a number of child safety advocates who criticise this initiative as ‘priming’ children to want to use social media as soon as they reach the platform’s minimum age requirements (12 years old).
This, critics say, is done in a way that pushes them towards dependency – particularly given that the brands (Sesame Street, Girl Scouts) are often marketed to children much younger than 12.
Leaders take
Both Google and Meta earn billions of dollars in advertising revenue from businesses that target children in their content. There is little incentive for the platforms to effectively crack down on dependency and high levels of use among children, and it’s safe to say tech platforms aren’t known for their altruistic approaches.
The more opposition these organisations face, the more impactful consequences will be. The legal challenges they have faced so far are likely to be the first of many, which could see large fines imposed if they are successful.
Framing safe tech use as a personal obligation rather than an industry-wide responsibility is unlikely to be effective, as the platforms have already been found in court to have been designed to be addictive, and that they risked user safety to fuel their algorithms.
It’s an uncomfortable reality that both tech platforms and advertisers rely on heavy use and potentially unhealthy habits for effective models – but both will need drastically improve their safety features and policies in meaningful ways to avoid more public, legal, and legislative backlash.
