Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. I'm Stephen Carol and
Speaker 1: this is Here's Why, where we take one news story
Speaker 1: and explain it in just a few minutes with our
Speaker 1: experts here at Bloomberg.
Speaker 2: It's a landmark move that aims to keep those on
Speaker 2: the sixteen off certain social media platforms. Children can no
Speaker 2: longer have their own accounts, and fans violating the rule
Speaker 2: phase fines of up to thirty three million dollars.
Speaker 1: They said it couldn't be done, but Australia is showing
Speaker 1: just how we could.
Speaker 2: Do it, and I think we've reached a point where
Speaker 2: the evidence is unambiguous.
Speaker 1: The addictive schooling is damaging.
Speaker 3: To their mental health. This platform is scino bot by,
Speaker 3: you know, essentially hooking these users young, because the younger
Speaker 3: that they get on these platforms, the more likely they
Speaker 3: are to continue using them in the future.
Speaker 2: These laws are popular all around the world because parents
Speaker 2: need help. They're tired of fighting with their kids about
Speaker 2: cell phones and and social media.
Speaker 1: It's a subject that unites parents and politicians the need
Speaker 1: to protect young people from the harmful effects of social media.
Speaker 1: Australia led the way last year when it banned under
Speaker 1: sixteens from accessing social platforms. A host of European countries
Speaker 1: are planning similar age restrictions. The European Union wants to
Speaker 1: impose a phased and gradual access for young people based
Speaker 1: on how old they are. Such measures aren't perfect, but
Speaker 1: they are having an effect for both users and for
Speaker 1: tech companies. Here's why social media bands are driving change.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg opinion columnist Parmeolsen joins us Now for more. Parme
Speaker 1: Australia was the first to impose a blanket ban. What
Speaker 1: do we know about how effective it's been.
Speaker 3: Well, it's still pretty early days. But from some of
Speaker 3: the first studies that are looking at teenagers asking them
Speaker 3: questions about their use of social media before the ban
Speaker 3: and then after the band, there's one in particular by
Speaker 3: the BMJ and it found actually not much difference. Most
Speaker 3: teenagers under sixteens, because this is a band in Australia
Speaker 3: that applies to children under the age of sixteen, are
Speaker 3: still using those platforms, so there's not really a big
Speaker 3: gap between kids who are unjust under sixteen or just
Speaker 3: over sixteen. They're all still using it. And part of
Speaker 3: the reason is relatively weak age checks, so you know,
Speaker 3: one of the most common ways that sites are now
Speaker 3: verifying an age is simply through self declaration, and then
Speaker 3: kids also just have to upload a selfie. So I
Speaker 3: think what that has really shown is that legislating a
Speaker 3: ban like this isn't going to make a big change
Speaker 3: necessarily unless it's enforced properly. It's not the same as
Speaker 3: enforcing it. So again, it's early days, so maybe that
Speaker 3: will change, and I'm sure it will because there's a
Speaker 3: lot more than just what's happening in Australia. There's a
Speaker 3: real momentum growing globally with many different countries who also
Speaker 3: want to enact similar bands. But to start with, for
Speaker 3: Australia as the pioneer of this, it's taken a while
Speaker 3: to really have an effect on teenagers.
Speaker 1: I mean, let's talk a bit about this global drive.
Speaker 1: Then why are so many other policymakers pushing ahead with
Speaker 1: measures like this even if the evidence we have so
Speaker 1: far isn't terribly strong about their effectiveness.
Speaker 3: I think it's because this is what parents want and
Speaker 3: it really shouldn't surprise and I think this is sort
Speaker 3: of a long time coming. If we think back to
Speaker 3: the Cambridge Analytica scandal with Facebook. This was probably the
Speaker 3: real turning point for the general public's perception of technology companies.
Speaker 3: And ever since then, as these companies have grown bigger
Speaker 3: and the users on their platforms have gone into the
Speaker 3: billions of people, and there's been more reporting in the
Speaker 3: press and whistleblowers showing the harmful side effects of being
Speaker 3: on social media, the toxic content, the going down rabbit holes,
Speaker 3: the misinformation and conspiracy theories, and you know, teenage girls
Speaker 3: who feel worse about themselves when they're on Instagram. That
Speaker 3: was a very famous study that came out of Facebook's
Speaker 3: own research, and we know about that because of the whistleblower,
Speaker 3: Francis Hogan, who released a whole trove of documents. So
Speaker 3: all this over the last you know, five to ten years,
Speaker 3: has been slowly building this gradual kind of understanding that actually,
Speaker 3: while these platforms are fun to use and they are
Speaker 3: addictive and people you know, scratch this kind of mental
Speaker 3: itch when they get to go on their Instagram or
Speaker 3: Snap or whatever it is, there is this toxic side
Speaker 3: effect and it's particularly worrying for young people. For kids,
Speaker 3: it can potentially exacerbate loneliness, bullying, deep fake nudes. All
Speaker 3: these kinds of other potential second order effects are coming
Speaker 3: out of the addictive qualities of these platforms that cause,
Speaker 3: as far as we understand, so many teenagers to be
Speaker 3: on them for so long. And so there's been a
Speaker 3: real backlash not just from governments, but I think it
Speaker 3: started sort of in the grassroots with parents Here in
Speaker 3: the UK. About a year ago we had this campaign
Speaker 3: among parents through WhatsApp, kind of spreading the word of
Speaker 3: signing petitions and joining groups where parents were agreeing to
Speaker 3: not give their kids smartphones and not let their kids
Speaker 3: on social media when they go into secondary school. So
Speaker 3: this has really been building for some time, and now
Speaker 3: we're at a point where many countries in the European
Speaker 3: Union are talking about also enacting bands. The United Kingdom
Speaker 3: is also in acting bands. And while in the US
Speaker 3: the federal government doesn't want to have anything to do
Speaker 3: with this, they're actually kind of antagonistic against this. They
Speaker 3: they've even stopped some safety officials from Europe getting visas
Speaker 3: to go into the US and called on a couple
Speaker 3: of them to testify and kind of see them as
Speaker 3: this kind of censorship complex. Actually, quite a number of
Speaker 3: US states are also looking into potential bands or potential
Speaker 3: laws that can try and prevent young people from getting
Speaker 3: addicted to social media early on or using social media platforms.
Speaker 1: So how have the tech companies then responded to this
Speaker 1: pressure from regulators, be it in the form of the
Speaker 1: ban in the case of Australia and other countries, or
Speaker 1: other methods.
Speaker 3: Well, from what we can tell, there's been, as you
Speaker 3: might predict, a kind of bare minimum compliance in terms
Speaker 3: of actually, you know, stopping kids from using these platforms,
Speaker 3: to the point now where five platforms are on formal
Speaker 3: investigation by the Australian government over there properly complying with
Speaker 3: the law, including Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube. And I
Speaker 3: think it's you know again, this shouldn't surprise you. Young people
Speaker 3: are perhaps the most important cohort of the users for
Speaker 3: these companies. They are the most engaged and they represent
Speaker 3: their future revenue base over the next few decades. So
Speaker 3: it's very important to these companies that actually young people
Speaker 3: do stay on their platforms and go to them almost
Speaker 3: as a kind of natural thing to do. And what
Speaker 3: I always find what kind of blows my mind is,
Speaker 3: you know, if you think about it, meta platforms the
Speaker 3: owner of Facebook and Instagram, and Alphabet the owner of YouTube.
Speaker 3: They're incredibly good at ad targeting and getting to know
Speaker 3: their users on a very fine grained basis, the demographics
Speaker 3: of their users, and so I think in a lot
Speaker 3: of ways, and we don't have full clarity on this,
Speaker 3: but they can certainly get a close approximation of the
Speaker 3: ages of their users just based on their behavior on
Speaker 3: the site and what they're looking at. Now whether they
Speaker 3: actually take that into account and do anything about that
Speaker 3: is another matter. So you know, the technical ability to
Speaker 3: stop under sixteens from coming on the platform is there,
Speaker 3: but the incentive is not.
Speaker 1: The social platforms say that they're investing in enforcement of
Speaker 1: the Australian band, but Metas also talked about accurately determining
Speaker 1: a user's age being a challenge for the whole industry. So,
Speaker 1: besides the age related bands, what other methods are regulators
Speaker 1: looking at to try to reduce the harm from social media.
Speaker 3: Well, there's a really interesting bill that's being tabled this
Speaker 3: year called the Digital Fairness Act by you Justice Minister
Speaker 3: Michael McGrath, and it's aimed at creating a more level
Speaker 3: and fair platforms for consumers generally trying to get rid
Speaker 3: of the sort of the dark patterns that you might
Speaker 3: have on websites that trick people into clicking something when
Speaker 3: they don't really want to click something. And part of
Speaker 3: that also addresses the addictive nature of many social media feeds.
Speaker 3: So one of the features that this bill is targeting
Speaker 3: is auto play. So when you go on YouTube, you're
Speaker 3: watching a video and then just as you're getting to
Speaker 3: the end, another video as already teed up and just
Speaker 3: plays automatically. And that's one part of YouTube's kind of
Speaker 3: secret sauce for keeping people on the platform for a
Speaker 3: long time. The infinite scroll. You know, when you're scrolling
Speaker 3: through Instagram or Facebook, it never ends. But what if
Speaker 3: can you imagine you're scrolling and then you get a
Speaker 3: little notification saying that's it, You're all caught up, there's
Speaker 3: nothing left to scroll. And so what this bill is
Speaker 3: pushing for is that tech companies turn off those features
Speaker 3: by default. So if I want the infinite scroll, I
Speaker 3: have to actually turn it, but by default it will
Speaker 3: be off. If that bill doesn't get watered down, that
Speaker 3: could be really interesting in terms of addressing some of
Speaker 3: the very key issues that have been coming up in
Speaker 3: the jury trials against social media companies that we saw
Speaker 3: in the US today, exactly those addictive features and those
Speaker 3: design patterns that are kind of fundamental to keeping people
Speaker 3: on the sites and helping them make money. I think
Speaker 3: the big question is whether that law does get watered
Speaker 3: down before it's kind of formalized. There's been a huge
Speaker 3: lobbying effort here in Europe towards MEPs and officials who
Speaker 3: are working on and who are voting on that bill,
Speaker 3: and the kind of the big argument from tech companies
Speaker 3: is that if you pass a law like that, then
Speaker 3: it's going to hurt innovation in Europe and it's going
Speaker 3: to hold back Europe's prospects in terms of getting an
Speaker 3: economic benefit from technology, which I think is complete hogwash
Speaker 3: because the real reason that the European tech businesses here
Speaker 3: don't do well is because they don't get enough funding.
Speaker 3: It's I don't think regulation is really the issue, particularly
Speaker 3: regulation that addresses the harmful side effects of the biggest
Speaker 3: social media firms. Another way that bill could get watered
Speaker 3: down is that it's only applied to children or to teenagers,
Speaker 3: So I mean that would take away the potential benefits
Speaker 3: for adults who want to kind of avoid those side effects,
Speaker 3: but that could just be another way to address that
Speaker 3: issue for under sixteens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're expecting that proposal from the European Commission later
Speaker 1: this year's We'll be watching that with great interest at
Speaker 1: PARMI thank you so much for joining us. Bloomberg Opinion
Speaker 1: columnist parme Els in there, and you can read Parmy's
Speaker 1: latest pieces by going to Bloomberg dot com forward slash Opinion.
Speaker 1: For more explanations like this from our team of three
Speaker 1: thousand journalists and analysts around the world, go to Bloomberg
Speaker 1: dot com slash explainers. I'm Stephen Carroll. This is here's why.
Speaker 1: I'll be back next week with more. Thanks for listening.