By Aviv Newman

If you’ve watched your child scroll through an endless waterfall of photos and videos on social media, then you know sites like Instagram provide an addicting experience to teenagers. In a recent New York Times article, “How Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Failed Children on Safety, States Say,” Natasha Singer explores several lawsuits against Meta, owner of Instagram and Facebook, that accuse the social media behemoth of knowing about yet ignoring the active danger to teens that its apps pose.

According to the June 2024 story, one person Meta ignored was one of its own executives, David Ginsberg. Back in 2019 (when the company was still called Facebook), Ginsberg asked his boss, Meta head and Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, for 24 employees to “research and reduce loneliness and compulsive use on Instagram and Facebook.” Meta’s chief financial officer Susan Li told Ginsberg that staffing constraints prevented the project from being funded. Yet around two months after Ginsberg made his request, Meta had 39,651 employees and would gain 3,379 employees in the following quarter.

Nevertheless, Meta stands by its claims that it seeks to protect teens. Singer quotes Meta spokesperson Liza Crenshaw, who said that “we want to reassure every parent that we have their interests at heart in the work we’re doing to help provide teens with safe experiences online.” Crenshaw cites safety tools for kids and Meta teams that are focusing on their experiences. However, with “a core part of the company’s growth strategy” focused on teens, Meta ignored health and safety concerns.

Singer enumerates several complaints against the company, which include Meta’s handling of their “Beauty Filters”—including one called “Fix Me.” After receiving backlash, they only banned some. Another is that while Meta made efforts to remove underage Instagram accounts, they still knew that there were many left—roughly “four million children under the age of 13” were on Instagram, according to one report. Finally, Meta removed certain posts with “‘highly disturbing’ violent and sexualized content, some of it involving children” only after another company complained about its ads being run next to them.

All of this goes to show that there are many institutional and structural reasons why you may be finding it so hard to keep your child safe on social media. The complaints and lawsuits against Meta are a great place to start to hold Meta accountable for the damage it has caused. There are also wider changes being proposed on a governmental level. You can contact your representatives to let them know this is an issue their constituents care about.

And what can you do to keep your children safe on a more personal level? Use our conversation starters below to understans how your kids feel about social media:

Conversation Starters

  1. What’s fun or helpful about social media?
  2. What’s annoying or hurtful about social media?
  3. Social media apps are free to use, but cost money to run. How do the companies behind these apps make money?
  4. Since social media can be addicting, how do you want to make sure you stay safe? What kinds of limits should you have on your social media time? How can you monitor yourself and how can I as your parent set boundaries?
  5. How can I help you as your parent when you encounter things that make you feel uncomfortable on social media?

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