In today’s onlife world, technology is ubiquitous and plays an indispensable role in our lives, and youth have emerged as vanguards in this onlife evolution. With their innate curiosity and adaptability, young people often lead the way when it comes to embracing new technologies. However, it is crucial to recognize that the internet is not always a safe and secure homogeneous entity for everyone – it’s not all sugar and spice and everything nice. The experiences and perspectives of youth vary greatly and because of this fact, and depending upon the youth, it is an unfortunate fact they can encounter less-than-desirable content when online that can have a negative emotional, psychological, physical, and emotional effect on some.
One key concern we have when it comes to protecting youth from this less-than-desirable online content – the increasing prevalence of adults, more specifically politicians, wanting to create digital walled gardens through legislation that target youth, rather than social media vendors, in an attempt to control, protect, and limit their access to information and services through legislation.
Presently, we are seeing youth focused legislation that enact age-gating laws banning young users from accessing social media without their parent’s consent, digital curfews that if a youth is under the age of 18yrs they will not be allowed to access social media between the hours of 10:30pm and 6:30am, or even banning specific social networks such as TikTok all together. However, it is our opinion, that these should be governed by parents and not through government legislation.
While such legislation may provide a sense of security and safety to parents, it is important to understand that youth often find themselves restricted within predetermined boundaries. They yearn for the freedom to explore and interact beyond these confines, seeking diverse perspectives and experiences. This fact causes concern to many parents given the unmediated environment of the internet where pornography, online hate, suicidal ideations, drug use, radicalization, and online exploitation, to name a few, are all but a click away.
A major contributor that exacerbates this issue is the prevalence of attention-grabbing algorithms. These algorithms analyze a users’ online history and feeds them content that the social media platform believes will be most appealing, engaging, and/or financially profitable to the platform.
While algorithms may seem convenient to some users, they can create an echo chamber effect for others, where young people are exposed only to information and viewpoints that align with their existing beliefs and preferences. As one can imagine, this can become problematic if a youth find themselves in a bad place in their lives and seek out like minded users who have the same bad thoughts and experiences online. For these teens, these algorithms can very quickly lead them down an unhealthy deep and dark digital rabbit hole.
However, youth are resilient – in an attempt to counter this algorithmic manipulation, we have seen youth becoming increasingly adept at gaming the system. Most are actively working to ensure that they see the positives rather than the negatives of social media and other online platforms. By selectively engaging with content that aligns with their interests, youth can curate their online experiences and create a more favorable digital environment for themselves.
Rather than implementing these legislative mandated digitally enclosed spaces that are youth centric, what alternatives can we pursue? Here are two recommendations we propose:
#1 – empower youth to navigate the challenges posed by these algorithms through digital literacy education.
By equipping youth with the skills and knowledge to understand how algorithms work, they gain agency over their digital experiences. Digital literacy education can teach them to critically evaluate information, recognize biases, and seek out diverse perspectives. It empowers them to actively shape their online interactions rather than passively consuming the content served to them by algorithms.
Digital literacy education enables young people to become active participants in the digital landscape, rather than just mere consumers. By understanding the mechanics of algorithms, they can contribute to the creation of positive and inclusive digital spaces. They can use their agency to advocate for algorithmic transparency, ethical data practices, and algorithms that prioritize user well-being over engagement metrics. In doing so, they can foster a more balanced and meaningful online environment for themselves.
#2 – Instead of legislation that targets youth, let’s instead create legislation that places a legal onus on social media platforms to change such as:
- Requiring social media companies to restrict the data collection, profiling, and geolocation services for young users’ accounts,
- Requiring social media platforms to provide those under the age of 18yrs with the highest level of privacy settings by default, and
- Requiring social media platforms that by default to disable algorithmic recommendations for users under 18 years of age.
While legislation aimed at protecting youth may seem reassuring, it often limits their freedom to explore and learn. In some cases, there could also be legal consequences to the youth for breaching such legislation. Like it or not, youth centric targeted legislation is nothing more than a Nirvana fallacy that is often created and enacted for political gain and will do little to protect our kids who will find ways to by-pass these types of legislative digitally walled gardens.
Instead of targeting youth, legislation should hold social media platforms accountable by restricting data collection, providing privacy settings, and disabling algorithmic recommendations for young users. We have allowed tech companies to police themselves and this has not worked, the time has come to legislate rather than negotiate on the above noted suggestions.
To realize the full potential of youth as technology vanguards, it is essential that all stakeholders prioritize digital literacy education. Governments, educational institutions, and tech companies must collaborate to develop comprehensive programs that equip young people and their parents or caregivers with the skills necessary to navigate the complexities of today’s onlife world – this is something that we do here at the White Hatter.
By investing in a wrap-around approach involving digital literacy, combined with legislation that targets social media vendors rather than youth, we can foster critical thinking, empathy, and responsible digital citizenship among most youth. At the same time, we need to hold social media platforms legally responsible to do more to protect our kiddos, and if they don’t, then through legislation they will face significant financial consequences for failing to do so.
Digital Food For Thought
The White Hatter
