Child predators lurk online, hoping to take advantage of the nearly perpetual use of social media. When kids are looking to zone out, connect with friends, or be entertained, they can easily be met with criminals posing as peers.
This was one of the topics of discussion last week during a heated hearing the Senate Judiciary Committee hosted. They grilled Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, about the pervasive nature of sexual content and child predators on Instagram, which Meta owns.
Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) presented a line of questioning that went viral.
“Why, Mr. Zuckerberg, should your company not be sued for this?” Hawley asked. “Shouldn’t you be held accountable personally? Will you take personal responsibility?” Later, after Zuckerberg tried to say his company was leading others in efforts to thwart child predators, Hawley responded, “Oh, nonsense. Your product is killing people.”
Zuckerberg did eventually stand up, face the parents of victims behind him, and offer his condolences.
The next day, Hawley wrote to Zuckerberg and asked that he personally bankroll a victims' compensation fund for families of children who say they were victims of harm via Instagram and Facebook. “Yesterday, you publicly apologized to the families of children exploited by your platforms... Now you can show the world you were sincere,” Hawley wrote in the letter. “You amassed your fortune from Facebook's growth; but while your platform grew, so did its role in enabling child exploitation.”
The role of Big Tech in the demise of social interaction and mental health, especially among teenagers, is significant. Even if these platforms were created with a genuine desire to facilitate connection, which is always what people like Zuckerberg have claimed, the facts remain that as they’ve become more ubiquitous, they’ve become more distracting. As they’ve claimed to connect more people via Instagram, people feel more lonely. Or, when they do make connections, they’re toxic. Rather than be satisfied in brief entertainment, or learning about something new on a platform like Instagram or TikTok, kids scroll for hours, often finding the darkest, most perverse reaches of the web. Rather than feel better about themselves, they feel worse. Rather than be more connected to their family, friends, and their values, they find themselves on the receiving end of harassment, exploitation, or abuse.
Even if the intent was always good and pure, Big Tech facilitates platforms that have grown into a behemoth that’s difficult, if not impossible to control. This is why Democrats and Republicans alike often call for some kind of censorship: Teens don’t just have access to their own virtual home, but through these platforms, all the homes in the world, even the bad ones. One key on one lock won’t do it. We need more keys and more locks. To some extent, the observation that Big Tech is an uncontrollable monster is accurate. It’s possible that some legislation will curb this to an extent, perhaps like requiring parental consent for kids to download certain apps, but these are still limited in their scope and ability to curb rampant online use and abuse.
Recently on Fox News, commentator Jesse Watters explained he thinks these hearings are nothing more than a show to prop up politicians via their bombastic talking points and pummel talented billionaires for viral clips. In the end, Watters doesn’t think anyone can do much about these platforms but people themselves can. “Wake up and unshackle yourself from tech addiction. Don't rely on the government and a CEO. It's time for the American people to start taking control,” he says.
It is ironic that the party that often touts personal responsibility when it comes to firearms or economics, or even abortion, turns around and spews “Take accountability!” at Mark Zuckerberg for failing to manage what America’s kids are doing on his platform in their rooms — or what child predators are doing too, despite the fact that Meta has an entire task force dedicated to that issue.
I’m a parent of four kids and I know it’s hard to police everyone’s phones. Families are busy and it’s almost impossible to be with them every moment they have their device. But settings can be adjusted, apps can be banned or removed, rewards for good decisions can occur, and if anything, this tussle about platforms presents a nearly-constant opportunity to talk about what’s out there in the world that’s also grappling for their attention. It can teach them to make good decisions, even if that means, not going on the platforms at all until they can handle it.
Americans should encourage Big Tech to be as responsible as possible when it comes to predators online — that’s a given. But parents and kids can take responsibility too.
