Metaverse must spur parents into action

Family engagement breaks the digital stranglehold. Photo by August de Richelieu from Pexels 

Parents, please give full attention to the whirlwind surrounding Facebook, the toll levelled at its social media platforms, and its massive new project involving ways to entrap children first, but the rest of us, too, in a civilisation of its own making.

The fact that many leaders in the tech field apply tight restrictions on their own children's use of digital devices gives us one solution to society's difficulties with the whole tech domain.

First, what is going on that impels us to break new ground in parental control within the family. We need to be convinced that the array of digital dangers is large and that protection by way of restriction on device use is essential. 

Facebook's ambition to reconfigure everyone's environment into a proprietary "metaverse" creates a whole new set of dangers on top of the damage, to young people particularly, that its social media platforms already cause, according to Frances Haugen, the former Facebook data engineer and product manager, who produced thousands of company documents to explain her motivation in becoming a whistleblower.  

Within days of the public alarm and the intense interest of legislators aroused by the release of Haugen's Facebook information, Facebook changed its corporate name to Meta, saying it wanted a new name to point to the all-encompassing virtual reality world at the heart of its growth strategy. It was where the future of the internet lay. Commentators said Facebook was trying to distract attention from Haugen by starting a new narrative.

The word metaverse is borrowed from science-fiction, and refers to a future version of the internet which people access using virtual-reality and augmented-reality headsets, rather than via laptops and phones. (Source)

While in the UK and Europe, speaking at conferences and meeting lawmakers, Haugen has been condemning Facebook for launching this massive project while its Facebook and Instagram entities are wreaking havoc.

Instead of putting its profits before the well-being of its users, Facebook must invest in “security” before “metaverse”,  Haugen told a tech summit in Lisbon. The safety of children and protecting the public from false information must be the priorities. Her words:

 Again and again, Facebook chooses to expand into new areas rather than sticking to what it has already done. I find that unacceptable… We must devote more resources to basic security systems.

“Instead of investing to ensure that their platforms are a minimum safe, they are about to (hire) 10,000 engineers” in Europe for the development of the “metaverse”, she added.

 While in Brussels, Haugen gave an interview:

[T]he new focus on the metaverse creates a whole new set of dangers, Haugen said. In Snow Crash, the 1992 sci-fi novel that coined the phrase, “it was a thing that people used to numb themselves when their lives were horrible,” she said.

 “So beyond the fact that these immersive environments are extremely addictive and they encourage people to unplug from the reality we actually live,” she said, “I’m also worried about it on the level of — the metaverse will require us to put many, many more sensors in our homes and our workplaces,” forcing users to relinquish more of their data and their privacy.

 But Haugen said employees of companies that use the metaverse would have little option but to participate in the system or leave their jobs.

“If your employer decides they’re now a metaverse company, you have to give out way more personal data to a company that’s demonstrated that it lies whenever it is in its best interests,” she said.

And she cautioned the public not to expect more transparency.

“They’ve demonstrated with regard to Facebook that they can hide behind a wall. They keep making unforced errors, they keep making things that prioritize their own profits over our safety,” she said.

Haugen told the European Parliament: 

“The choices being made by Facebook’s leadership are a huge problem — for children, for public safety, for democracy — that is why I came forward,” she said. “And let’s be clear: it doesn’t have to be this way.”

She previously worked at other tech companies including Google, Pinterest and Yelp, and was able to compare the way they operate. She said that Twitter, for example, was “substantially more transparent”, accountable and aware of what is on its platform.

When before a UK parliamentary committee Haugen spoke of the urgent need for regulation of Facebook. The Guardian reported her testimony this way:

 [Facebook's] internal culture prioritised profitability over its impact on the wider world, said Haugen, and “there is no will at the top to make sure these systems are run in an adequately safe way”. She added: “Until we bring in a counterweight, these things will be operated for the shareholders’ interest and not the public interest.”

She warned that Instagram, which is owned by Facebook and used by millions of children worldwide, may never be safe for pre-teens.

Amid growing concerns about the impact of Instagram on the mental health and body image of teenagers, Haugen said Facebook’s own research likened the app’s young users to addicts who feel unable to step away from a service that makes them unhappy.

“The last thing they see at night is someone being cruel to them. The first thing they see in the morning is a hateful statement and that is just so much worse.” She claimed the company’s own research found Instagram was more dangerous than other social media such as TikTok and Snapchat because the platform is focused on “social comparison about bodies, about people’s lifestyles, and that’s what ends up being worse for kids”.

She added: “I’m deeply worried it may not be possible to make Instagram safe for a 14-year-old and I sincerely doubt it’s possible to make it safe for a 10-year-old.”

Even without Haugen's evidence, public alarm at the toll of social media has been mounting. But it's becoming increasingly clear how the technology employs algorithms that actually promote addictive use, that encourage division in society by spreading the kind of information that outrages rather than informs. The whole technological world also robs people of personal information.

Parents, step forward. Protect your kids. 

The fact that many leaders in the tech field apply tight restrictions on their own children's use of smartphones and the like seems to have flown under the radar of busy parents, who know the dangers facing their children, who despair at the lack of mutual engagement of family members, who acknowledge the addictive power of devices on their children and themselves, but who do not relish the battles with self-discipline or with complaining youngsters who are battling peer pressure.

Before we turn to some enlightened tech leaders for inspiration, guidance from health leaders might be in order:

In 2019, the World Health Organization released guidelines dictating that children aged 5 and under should have no more than one hour of screen time a day. The guidelines are somewhat similar to advice from the American Academy of Pediatrics, which recommends children younger than 18 months should avoid screens aside from video chats. (Source)

It says parents of children under 2 should choose "high-quality programming" with educational value and that can be watched with a parent to help kids understand what they're seeing.

A 2020 BusinessInsider article provides useful motivational information;

Our first example is Google CEO Sundar Pichai, whose middle-school-aged son doesn't own a cell phone — and the TV can only be accessed by using special controls. He aims to model the desired behaviour by restricting his own cellphone and computer use. 

Pichai's standards for screen time in the household may stem from his own childhood in Chennai, India. He told Bloomberg that he grew up with little phone access, no computer, and no television.

Second is the old favourite, Steve Jobs: In his household, dinnertime was reserved for face-to-face conversation with his children — meaning no iPads or iPhones in sight. Meal times "provided a space for him to discuss different topics and connect with his kids". 

Apparently the Jobs children hadn't even tried out the iPad after it hit shelves in 2010. He told the writer of a biography: "They haven't used it. We limit how much technology our kids use at home."

Third, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and her husband, Google executive Dennis Troper, "want their  children to learn how to ... balance screen-time with other activities".

In 2019, [she] told the Guardian that while she prefers her five children to create 'self-control methods,' there are times when she needs to limit screen-time.

"I have times when I take away all my kids' phones, especially if we're on a family vacation, because I want people to interact with each other," said Wojcicki. "So, I take away their phones and say: 'We're all going to focus on being present today.'"

Wojcicki emphasizes that she wants her children to have a healthy outlook on devices and understand when it is time to take a break from them. 

Fourth is investor and Shark Tank star Mark Cuban, "who set up special routers in his house, allowing him to monitor when his kids are using the internet — and shut down all activities when they go over their set screen-time limits".

Fifth are Snapchat cofounder and CEO Evan Spiegel and former Victoria's Secret Angel Miranda Kerr. They limit their [then] 8-year-old's screen time to 1.5 hours per week.

Spiegel himself grew up not watching TV as a kid, and has said it forced him to read, build things, and think for himself. He told the Financial Times that he wants to pass on the same benefits to his daughter.

Though that doesn't necessarily mean he wants to completely cut her off from technology. 

"I think the more interesting conversation to have is really around the quality of that screen time," Spiegel told the Financial Times.

In the past he has advocated for parents to consider reevaluating and limiting their kids' screen time.

Finally, Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian and tennis icon Serena Williams "say they plan on limiting their daughter's screen time as she gets older". 

Although [their] daughter is only two years old, Ohanian told CNBC that the couple already have a game plan for when their toddler develops a curiosity for all things digital.

"My wife and I both want her to know what it's like to have limits on tech," Ohanian said. "I do look forward to playing video games with her when she's older, but it's really important that she gets time to just be with her thoughts and be with her blocks and be with her toys, so we'll be regulating it pretty heavily."

Restrictions imposed on screentime offer the opportunity for young people to learn how to be warm and engaged and for adults to flourish.

The countercultural aspect of standing against the digital oppression evident in modern life comes clear when that environment is observed by a newcomer. An example is given in the observation offered by Chinese student Habi Zhang and reported here:

She said that when she arrived in Indiana, she was amazed by large homeschooling Catholic families in Indiana where people don’t give their kids cellphones, and where people’s social lives don’t seem driven by technology. She said, “I see true, full humans in those lovely souls.”

[There,] no one is distracted by the “modern life” that is supposed to be inundated with emails, texts, or phone calls; they are effortlessly fully present and engaging each other with full attention. 

Her experience contrasted sharply with what amounted to a shallow shared consumerism she was accustomed to in China. It also confirmed her "conviction that our deepest emotional needs can be satisfied only in genuine human companionship".

From the same reporting, we learn of the views of James Poulos who has a new book out, Human Forever: The Digital Politics of Spiritual War. He foresees the moral attitudes abroad in society enabling political forces that will overwhelm society.

Poulos said that what’s wrong with [civil] institutions is that they are not going to survive in a world in which everyone has a smartphone and plugging it into our brains all the time. “We have to accept the fact that we are cyborgs now,” he said.

He added that it is not clear that most people want to live in a world free from digital devices. Poulos: “The thought that institutions built to rule the world, in a liberal international sense, are able to extend control over those devices is being proven not to be true. Liberal democracy [is not] proving itself capable of controlling these technologies.”

In brief, it's up to parents to take control of what they can to prevent their families being hollowed out by the powerful digital realm. The family is the basic unit of society and its influence can also be powerful. Therefore, it seems true to our situation that the survival of thriving communities is dependent on "the activism that happens in our neighborhoods and homes”.

See also my posts:

Facebook: What parents can and must do 

Facebook evidence calls parents to arms

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