What do kids see on social media?
Year 8 to 12 students, parents, and teachers
Researchers is England were interested to lift the curtain on what tech slippery teens switching from one account to another on their mobile devices encounter on their little screens. Rather than interviewing loads of teens and getting perhaps some inkling, they realised a better way was to see what the social media platforms were dishing out under rigorously controlled experimental conditions. They set up a series of profiles on popular social media apps—modelled on the genuine behaviours of children aged 13-17. And they recorded what happened to them;
Within hours, unknown adults had followed most profiles (registered with the genuine age of a child), sent unsolicited messages or added to group-chats. Several were sent links to pornographic content.
With one ‘like’ of a fitness tip or a bikini model, our child-avatars were immediately recommended higher volumes of similar or more extreme content—weight loss advice, body-building guides, highly sexualised content.
One search of a term like ‘body goals’ or ‘porn’ unlocked access to even more extreme content. In one experiment, they typed ‘self-harm’ into the search bar, and the results were shocking.
Something needs to be done to curb these tech companies, as their promises of self-regulation are clearly not working. Teen suicides, self-harm incidents, eating disorders and chronic depression occur too often amongst young people, and are in part the result of their exposure to social media.
Source: Pathways: How digital design puts children at risk
Question: How do you try to protect your children from online harm?
Casper Pieters PhD Dip Ed is an author and educator who uses adventure narratives to enliven the ICT curriculum for young people. www.casperpieters.com
