Social media safety

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: a social media platform heading into dangerous territory.

Heads up to those with young listeners nearby. This deals with a sensitive subject inappropriate for children. You may want to fast forward about 6 minutes.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It was back in May when the social media platform X — that used to be Twitter— announced it would officially allow pornographic content on its platform. X also announced some new restrictions, but advocates for online safety are worried…as are parents.

WORLD Correspondent Juliana Chan Erikson has the story.

KATHERINE MARTINKO: My gut reaction is no: I think that’s a terrible idea.

JULIANA CHAN ERIKSON: X.com’s “adult content” announcement caught Katherine Martinko off guard. The Canada-based blogger writes about kids and technology. She’s also a mom with three boys between the ages of 9 and 14.

MARTINKO: It seems like a recipe for disaster to be honest.

ERIKSON: Twitter, or X, is now the only major social media platform to sanction pornography. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and others still officially ban it. It’s still possible to find objectionable material on these platforms, though some say X’s decision to allow pornography raises the level of concern. Benjamin Bull is general counsel for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation.

BENJAMIN BULL: The fact is I think they have a box that says, you know, check this if it's, if the material is sensitive. That's like advertising for people who are looking for porn. It's not going to result in less pornography, it's gonna result in more and more viewership.

ERIKSON: More views may be exactly what Twitter is looking for. With more than 600 million active users, it remains one of the most active social media platforms in the world. But it’s dwarfed by platforms like Instagram and TikTok that have amassed 1 and 2 billion subscribers over just a few years. And according to recent reporting from the Wall Street Journal and New York Times many of those subscribers are teenagers already scrolling through racy images and videos.

MARTINKO: If parents are truly worried about limiting their kids’ exposure to that, then they need to be rethinking their whole relationship to social media in general.

So what can parents do to protect their children online? One option is to use third-party software to filter out bad content. But social media companies make that difficult. Some, like X, charge high fees for safety software to filter their content. Others, like TikTok, don’t allow filtering software at all.

MARC BERKMAN: The fact that they do not allow third party safety software is unconscionable.

Marc Berkman is the CEO of the Organization for Social Media Safety.

BERKMAN: ​​It's tricky. I mean, we're a little bit in the wild west now. Our major legislative focus both federally and statewide, is a piece of legislation called Sammy’s Law.

Sammy’s Law is named after Sammy Chapman, a 16 year old who died in 2021 from a lethal dose of fentanyl. The teen met the drug dealer on Snapchat. So far, only Illinois and California have introduced the bill. If it goes into effect, Sammy’s Law will require social media platforms to allow third party filtering software to monitor their content.

Meanwhile, lawmakers on Capitol Hill are working on legislation that would require social media companies to protect minors from sexual exploitation and a host of other harms. Though it may be a while before those protections go into effect.

Lawyers like Benjamin Bull say they’re hoping lawsuits will keep social media accountable. His group is representing two boys who say that X allowed an adult to post graphic images of them on the platform when they were both 13 years old.

BULL: They were groomed by somebody they thought was a beautiful 16 year old girl turned out to be a 40 something year old pedophile.

Bull says a moderator for X reviewed the images but found they did not violate their policy on sexual content at the time. So the images stayed online, and the number of viewers grew.

BULL: Finally, the parents through a friend of a friend got in touch with law enforcement Homeland Security, which contacted Twitter directly and it was only then that Twitter deleted the posts. In the meantime, there have been over 200,000 views that we know of, hundreds of downloads and when something is downloaded, you know can be uploaded, these boys are going to be on the internet forever.

Many social media companies hear the growing complaints and have already agreed to implement changes to make their platform safer and less addictive. TikTok added a tool that filters out videos with certain words or hashtags. And Instagram’s Sensitive Content feature will be turned on by default for young users.

But warning labels, policy changes, and lawsuits aren’t coming fast enough to change Martinko’s mind. She’s decided that all three of her sons will have to wait until at least age 18 to get access to social media.

MARTINKO: I can't wait, my my oldest son is almost 15 years old. My job is right now, to help him grow up and get through high school without the negative influence of spending nine hours a day on his phone, which is the national average right now in the U.S. for kids his age.

For kids with nothing to do this summer, it can be easy for parents to let their kids kill time scrolling through social media, but Martinko says it’s worth making the effort to replace it with other activities. 

MARTINKO: I think they need a good mix of, you know, active, outdoor, stimulating interactions with their families as well as time and space for quiet play, for contemplation, and for creative endeavors to grow.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Juliana Chan Erikson.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.