And the case for making Instagram only for adults.
Two weeks ago, The Wall Street Journal released an explosive report that revealed a glaring problem with Facebook's attempt to examine the impact of its platform on society: Facebook rarely does anything meaningful with its findings. |
Take, for instance, the lack of action around Instagram, the platform's photo-sharing app, despite internal research showing it damages teenagers' mental health. For Ross Douthat, the notion that tweaking an algorithm will somehow solve the problem should be discarded. Instead, a more radical solution is required: "You need to create a world where social media is understood to be for adults and the biggest networks are expected to police their membership and try to keep kids under 16 or 18 out," he writes. |
Kate Klonick has another idea. Though many companies are no doubt secretly congratulating themselves for avoiding a similar line of internal inquiry and landing themselves in the same mess as Facebook is in, she argues the report should spur reform across the tech industry. "That will require laws demanding transparency from platforms, a new agency to specialize in online issues and more science." Whether that will happen is, of course, another story. |
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