How Can Social Media Companies Make Their Apps Safer for Children?

There are several ways that social media companies could change what they’re doing to make their app safer, especially for younger users like children. The first is age verification and making sure that the people using the app are actually in the intended age group. It is so easy for an eight year old, a 9 year old to get on a social media app and lie about their age and be able to see a bunch of stuff that they shouldn’t be seeing. Their brains are particularly susceptible to harmful content, and that really needs to be changed. The second way that social media companies could address some of this is to change their algorithm approach. The goal for the social media companies is to keep users on the app and keep them addicted to what they’re watching, no matter what it is. There’s a lot of harmful content on there. There’s a lot of harmful information and the algorithms, the way that the product itself is created, is pushing these harmful videos towards children, and it’s really a shame. Content about eating disorders. Somebody may just be looking up some nutritional information or looking for recipes if they’re a 15 year old and all of a sudden they’re put down this rabbit hole of eating disorder encouragement and how to, you know, starve your body and that’s just, it’s really damaging, especially to minors, but to young adults as well. And the third thing that the social media companies could do is they could actually involve the parents a lot more in these, in a lot of privacy concerns. There are so many ways for youths to get on the app and parents to try their best to monitor it, but the apps are set up where it’s really difficult for parents to be able to see what their children are actually seeing. So to make that a little bit better monitored would be a lot, a huge help, and unfortunately, the social media companies are remiss to do that.