Why is it so hard to keep children off social media?
There are solutions to the problem of verifying age online, if internet firms have the incentive to do so
How young is too young to own a tablet? According to a report for the Department of Culture, one in four children under the age of two, and more than a third of three to five year-olds, now have one of their own. Ofcom figures show, meanwhile, that 39 per cent of eight to 11 year-olds have their own smartphone, and 94 per cent of them are online for an average of more than 13 hours per week.
These may be shocking figures to older readers, but the reality is that it is increasingly difficult to deny children access to digital devices. They are sources of entertainment and learning, used in schools and of course by parents themselves. But they can also be conduits of harm – with the greatest concern surrounding social media.
Most people agree that young children should not be using social media – even social media firms. The terms of service of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat say anyone under 13 would be violating their terms of service if they did so, while for Whatsapp the age limit is now 16. But we know this isn’t working. According to Ofcom, 23 per cent of eight to 11 year-olds use social media.
The problem is that, at present, most of these sites take the user’s word for it as to their date of birth – it’s perhaps not surprising that there is a disproportionate number of 99 year-olds from Zimbabwe on many social media platforms. Facebook has promised to double its staff working on “safety and security” to 20,000 by the end of the year and in 2011 was banning 20,000 underage users per day – but these still have to be reported by other users.
The companies sometimes argue that introducing proper age verification is too difficult, and that existing methods of verifying age would prove unacceptable to adult users. One of the only really effective ways to verify age at the moment, for example, is a credit card, as users must prove they are 18 to get one. But people are uncomfortable sharing financial information online – and if you’re 13 and actually allowed to use social media, a credit card won’t help.
The solution, as I see it, is threefold. First, it is not good enough for companies to assert they have fulfilled their duties if it is palpably clear that their terms of access are being broken on such a large scale. This would be the purpose of introducing a statutory duty of care. It would give the firm a legal responsibility to reduce harm, and a far greater incentive to come up with technological solutions that could make sure very young children are not signing up to their sites. A range of potential age-verification ideas have been floated, from using artificial intelligence to voice recognition.
Second, though controversial, it may be necessary to reignite the debate about ID cards. Any ageverification process will involve a violation of privacy in some form, and it may be better if that is done by governments rather than by corporations. These days it doesn’t even have to be a physical ID. Developments in biometrics, using facial or fingerprint recognition, continue. Yoti, an app adopted by the Jersey government for digital identity, combines selfies, a PIN and scanned IDS, allowing anonymous checking where required.
Third, there is parental responsibility, because this is also a cultural and societal issue. POST-GDPR, Germany – a country in which getting your Personalausweis card at 16 is something of a milestone – requires 13 to 15 year-olds to get digital consent from parents to have a Facebook account. While that is not yet the case here, parents could make better use of opt-in filtering from their internet and mobile providers, as well as “parental control” apps that can limit internet usage. Young people themselves have concerns about social media, which parents are often poor at realising. Open discussion of the issues and education should clearly be a priority.
The issue requires a multi-pronged approach. After all, digital is now part of life, and life is not risk-free. But social media companies must consider what they can do to help – and take a more robust approach to ensuring that today’s tablet-swiping two year-olds aren’t opening a social media account as soon as they turn three.