This could be significant, but then again…
Today, a Supreme Court judge has ruled that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri and Snap CEO Evan Spiegel will be required to appear in an upcoming trial in regards to the adverse effects of social media on younger users.
The three executives had sought to avoid personal appearances for this new trial, arguing that their recent past appearances before the Senate, in which they were all questioned about the same topic, have established their standing on such claims. But Judge Carolyn Kuhl ruled that they will need to appear, in order to provide company representation in this important case, which could act as a prompt for more social media regulation.
Which is under consideration in many regions.
EU leaders meeting in Brussels this week to discuss potential approaches to a teen social media ban, after 25 EU countries signed a declaration earlier this month that called for stronger protections for children online. France, Greece and Denmark, have already put their support behind a proposal to restrict social media access to users aged under 15, while Spain has proposed a 16 year-old access restriction.
At the same time, Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea are also moving to implement their own laws to restrict teen social media access, while the U.K. has implemented new regulations around age checking, in an effort to force platforms to take more action on this front.
There are, of course, challenges within this, with no universally agreed process for age checking, making enforcement difficult, while variable regulation makes it hard for the platforms to align with different rules.
But given the expanding calls for tougher restrictions, in order to limit harmful exposure, it seems likely that all social platforms will eventually be held to higher standards on this front, and will each be forced to change their approach in-step.
This latest trial in the U.S. is one of several ongoing investigations and legal challenges to social apps, as various groups look to push for new laws. The platforms themselves have argued that there’s no definitive evidence to support the claims of harm among young users, but there is enough data to raise questions about what’s happening, and whether enabling free access to social apps among teens is safe.
Though really, the bigger question is around enforcement, and ensuring that the platforms can actually stop teens from accessing social media apps.
Currently, all the major social media platforms have a 14+ age limit, which is not radically different from what’s being proposed in most of these new pushes. The issue is that such measures can’t be accurately enforced, with previous research showing, for example, that up to a third of TikTok’s U.S. users may be 14 or under (or may have been at the time of the study).
New measures are being tested, including video selfies, and AI detection. But again, there’s no standard measure for age checking, which means that each platform is still, effectively, going it alone, and coming up with their own approaches to align with rising expectations.
It seems likely that EU regulators will soon agree to a new standard on this front, while Australian authorities are close to establishing their own approach to uphold its upcoming teen social media restrictions.
If universal enforcement can be agreed upon, then that could make this a more actionable, enforceable approach to limit teen usage. But without defined rules, and accepted, standard tools or parameters, none of these measures are going to work.
Which is why forcing these CEOs to appear likely won’t have a big impact, but maybe, through such appearances, regulators will glean more insight into their thinking, which could impact how they propose teen restrictions moving forward.
