Facebook: What parents can and must do

 – Guardian headline

Facebook has struggled to pick itself up off the floor after the beating by parents and public health experts over its neglect of children, especially neglect of its young Instagram customers. It has managed to offer just a smattering of actions in response to The Wall Street Journal's revelations that Facebook had a wealth of information about how its platforms were harming children but did nothing.

Frances Haugen is to be congratulated for making the Facebook documents available and appearing before the US Congress to highlight the corporate negligence that is devastating young peoples' lives, even to the point of suicide. According to one news report: 

“The patterns that children establish as teenagers stay with them for the rest of their lives,” Haugen said in Senate testimony.

“The kids who are bullied on Instagram, the bullying follows them home. It follows them into their bedrooms. The last thing they see before they go to bed at night is someone being cruel to them,” Haugen said. “Kids are learning that their own friends, people who they care about, are cruel to them.”

The remedies Facebook offered in the days after Haugen's testimony are paltry. It will be "introducing several features including prompting teens to take a break using its photo sharing app Instagram, and 'nudging' teens if they are repeatedly looking at the same content that’s not conducive to their well-being". 

[It] is also planning to introduce new controls for adults of teens on an optional basis so that parents or guardians can supervise what their teens are doing online. These initiatives come after Facebook announced late last month that it was pausing work on its Instagram for Kids project. But critics say the plan lacks details and they are skeptical that the new features would be effective.

One of those critics elaborates:

Josh Golin, executive director of Fairplay, a watchdog for the children and media marketing industry, said that he doesn’t think introducing controls to help parents supervise teens would be effective since many teens set up secret accounts anyway. He was also dubious about how effective nudging teens to take a break or move away from harmful content would be. He noted Facebook needs to show exactly how they would implement it and offer research that shows these tools are effective. 

“There is tremendous reason to be skeptical,” he said. He added that regulators need to restrict what Facebook does with its algorithms. He also believed that Facebook should cancel its Instagram project for kids.

The use of algorithms, the set of computer instructions for solving a problem or accomplishing a task, show up in the disturbing experience of parents as related in a Guardian report on how Facebook's Instagram compounds any emotional or mental difficulties a young person might be undergoing:

Early in the Covid-19 pandemic, Michelle noticed her teenage daughters were spending substantially more time on Instagram.

The girls were feeling isolated and bored during lockdown, the Arizona mom, who has asked to be identified by her first name to maintain her children’s privacy, recalled. She hoped social media could be a way for them to remain connected with their friends and community.

But as the months progressed, the girls fell into pro-diet, pro-exercise and ultimately pro-eating-disorder hashtags on the social media app. It started with “health challenge” photos and recipe videos, Michelle said, which led to more similar content in their feeds. Six months later, both had started restricting their food intake. Her eldest daughter developed “severe anorexia” and nearly had to be admitted to a health facility, Michelle said. Michelle attributes their spiral largely to the influence of social media.

“Of course, Instagram does not cause eating disorders,” Michelle told the Guardian. “These are complex illnesses caused by a combination of genetics, neurobiology and other factors. But it helps to trigger them and keeps teens trapped in this completely toxic culture.”

This vicious situation was long known by Facebook executives, but was allowed to continue:

Testimony from the Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen revealed what parents of teens with unhealthy eating behaviors due to body-image fears had long known: Instagram has a substantial negative impact on some girls’ mental health regarding issues such as body image and self-esteem.

Internal research Haugen shared with the Wall Street Journal found the platform sends some girls on a “downward spiral”. According to one March 2020 presentation about the research, “32% of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse”.

But parents of teens with eating disorders [...] explained how their children had been directed from videos about recipes or exercise into pro-eating-disorder content and weight-loss progress images. And they said they struggled to regulate their children’s use of social media, which has become inextricable from their kids’ daily lives.

A parent living in the San Francisco Bay Area, Neveen Radwan, said that social media:

[...] “has played a humongous role” in her 17-year-old daughter’s eating disorder. The teen had been harmed not only by content that was explicitly pro-anorexia or weight loss, but also by edited photos of influencers and real-life friends. 

“The second she opens the app, she is bombarded by photos that are filtered, that are manipulated,” Radwan said. “She is trying to attain something that is unachievable.”

Over the past few years, Radwan’s daughter has journeyed down a long road of recovery from a severe eating disorder. At one point, her weight was down to 74lb. Her heart stopped beating and she had to be airlifted to a specialized facility.

To help her daughter avoid the triggers she believes helped send her to the hospital, Radwan tried installing a number of safeguards on the girl’s phone. She uses built-in iPhone tools to keep her daughter from downloading apps without permission and monitors her online activity.

Recently, after a year and a half in treatment, Radwan’s daughter was allowed to have her phone back. But within 30 minutes, the teen had sneaked around the restrictions to log into Instagram from the phone’s browser, Radwan said.

When her daughter had opened the app, her algorithm had been right where she had left it, Radwan said, in the midst of an endless feed of unhealthy eating and diet content.

“Once you look at one video, the algorithm takes off and they don’t stop coming – it’s like dominoes falling,” Radwan said. “It is horrific, and there is nothing we can do about it.” 

The Guardian article continues this valuable reporting by investigating where possible solutions can be found:

Experts say that Facebook, however, could do something about it. There are a number of proven tools that would prevent the spread of harmful content and misinformation, especially as it relates to eating disorders, according to Madelyn Webb, associate research director for Media Matters for America.

She explained that the algorithms recommend content similar to what users have shared, viewed or clicked on in the past – creating a feedback loop that some vulnerable teens cannot escape.

“But they will never change it because their profit model is fundamentally based on getting more clicks,” she said.

Haugen, in her testimony, suggested Facebook return to a chronological rather than algorithmically driven timeline on the platform to reduce the spread of misinformation and inflammatory content.

Facebook has said it works to minimize such content by restricting hashtags that promote it. But a report released in September by the advocacy group SumOfUs found 22 different hashtags promoting eating disorders still existed on Instagram at the time, and were connected to more than 45m eating disorder-related posts.

The report found 86.7% of eating disorder posts the researchers analyzed were pushing unapproved appetite suppressants and 52.9% directly promoted eating disorders.

Read the article in full. It relates other cases and links useful for parents facing this predicament. Read also about the Chinese government's action to rein in its big tech companies by having those corporate giants limit teens' use of video games to only three hours a week (!), from 8pm till 9pm on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, with an extra hour on public holidays. The government has called social media in general "spiritual opium" that turns the young generation into addicts unable to support a healthy society.

What parents can do

So what can parents do immediately to rescue an often intense situation, or to prevent one arising?

Be a parent: Parents must embrace their God-given authority over their children. The permissive style of parenting is a thing of the past given the desperate straits society is in.

Age limit: Parents need to set an age limit for having a smartphone, which is, of course, more than a phone, given the internet link it provides.Whereas US law sets 13 years as the entry point for social media: 

In her testimony, Haugen suggested raising the age limit to 16 or even 18. There has been a push among some parents, educators and tech experts to wait to give children phones — and access to social media — until they are older, such as the “Wait Until 8th” pledge that has parents sign a pledge not to give their kids a smartphone until the 8th grade. 

 “There is not necessarily a magical age,” said Christine Elgersma, a social media expert at the nonprofit Common Sense Media. But, she added, “13 is probably not the best age for kids to get on social media.”

It’s still complicated. There’s no reliable way to verify a person’s age when they sign up for apps and online services. And the apps popular with teens today were created for adults first. Companies have added some safeguards over the years, Elgersma noted, but these are piecemeal changes, not fundamental rethinks of the services.

Talk, talk, talk: Enjoy this effort as a platform for forging close family links.

Start early, earlier than you think. Elgersma suggests that parents go through their own social media feeds with their children before they are old enough to be online and have open discussions on what they see. How would your child handle a situation where a friend of a friend asks them to send a photo? Or if they see an article that makes them so angry they just want to share it right away?

For older kids, approach them with curiosity and interest.

“If teens are giving you the grunts or the single word answers, sometimes asking about what their friends are doing or just not asking direct questions like ‘what are you doing on Instagram?’ but ‘hey, I heard this influencer is really popular,’” she suggested. “And even if your kid rolled their eyes it could be a window.”

Don’t say things like “turn that thing off” when your kid has been scrolling for a long time, says Jean Rogers, the director of Fairplay, a nonprofit that advocates for kids to spend less time on digital devices.

“That’s not respectful,” Rogers said. “It doesn’t respect that they have a whole life and a whole world in that device.”

Instead, Rogers suggests asking them questions about what they do on their phone, and see what your child is willing to share.

Kids are also likely to respond to parents and educators “pulling back the curtains” on social media and the sometimes insidious tools companies use to keep people online and engaged, Elgersma said. Watch a documentary like The Social Dilemma that explores algorithms, dark patterns and dopamine feedback cycles of social media. Or read up with them how Facebook and TikTok make money.

“Kids love to be in the know about these things, and it will give them a sense of power,” she said.

Limits on use: Having a central household security box to hold all devices is one way of breaking the habit. Other ideas: 

Rogers says most parents have success with taking their kids’ phones overnight to limit their scrolling. Occasionally kids might try to sneak the phone back, but it’s a strategy that tends to work because kids need a break from the screen.

“They need to an excuse with their peers to not be on their phone at night,” Rogers said. “They can blame their parents.”

Parents may need their own limits on phone use. Rogers said it’s helpful to explain what you are doing when you do have a phone in hand around your child so they understand you are not aimlessly scrolling through sites like Instagram. Tell your child that you’re checking work email, looking up a recipe for dinner or paying a bill so they understand you’re not on there just for fun. Then tell them when you plan to put the phone down.

Get support:  Facebook has said it would welcome governmental regulation to allow transparency but also, presumably, to protect itself from any advantage companies that are not self-disciplined might have. Write to your representative for government action. Join groups - refer to the non-profit organisations referred to in this post - and go online for ideas on how to be an effective parent in this regard.

Parents, you can do it! In fact, you have to do it, for your family, and for the common good. Obviously, for you to be serious about your parental duty you have to be countercultural on several levels. To sum it all up, the future is relying on you! 

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