Meta is settling a major lawsuit with dozens of US states which alleged that Facebook and Instagram were designed to intentionally addict children with devastating impacts on their mental health including anxiety, depression, and even suicide. There's no guardrails, and these companies know it. And no amount of money is ever going to bring my beautiful daughter back.
Not even $17 billion, the financial penalty the company faces. That's nearly 13 billion pounds. The deal will also change how teenagers in the US use the platforms with things like usage capp to 2 hours a day, restrictions on overnight access, and quiet hours during school time.
Matthew Bergman's a lawyer representing thousands of families suing social media companies. He says these design changes will make a difference, but they don't go far enough. I would like to see them turn off their algorithms so that kids are shown what they want to see, not what they can't look away from.
Uh I would like to see them get rid of the infinite scroll. Uh and I would like to see uh them uh continue to make their platforms less addictive uh to children. Uh that said, these are major steps and they're steps in the right direction.
States will get around 70% of the money over the next decade. The rest, Meta says, will come when its competitors, YouTube and Tik Tok, implement similar measures and make payments of their own. Black cat, move your left, please.
Meta has long insisted that child safety is at the center of its platforms and still denies all wrongdoing as part of the settlement agreement. But after spending $10 billion on legal costs this quarter alone, it seems the company suddenly decided a deal was worth doing. But while the new restrictions are a win for parents in the US, for millions of teenagers using Instagram and Facebook elsewhere in the world, no changes just yet.
Well, joining me now is Mariano Janine, whose daughter Mia took her own life at the age of 14. She had been bullied on social media by pupils at her London school before she died in March 2021. Thank you very much for coming in.
Um, what's your reaction to this deal? because meta admit no mistakes and it's not clear whether any of the changes they're making in America will be done elsewhere in the world. So why they are so hurry in have a settlement?
I'm surprised. I was waiting the result of this in probably four weeks but I can see they are in a hurry. They want the settlement.
They don't want this to going on and start to see more whistlower or cases. So probably it's a strategic decision from Meta to go to this settlement. There are dozens of other cases being brought in America by a variety of different groups, school groups, individuals, personal injury cases.
Um so this is going to carry on going. I think it will carry on for what I read from this is evidently meta even if they don't admit doing nothing wrong they are prepared to change and and and and do changes in order to carry on for me and for the rest of the parents from day one when we start this to campaign about this we want two things we want platform to be 100% respons responsible and 100% accountable. What does that mean in practical terms?
Well, uh responsible is you are responsible of the content. You cannot put on parents to take care of social media of the kids because you working the whole day. You are other generations should be the platform who limit the use the access and the contents on on the social media platform.
We shouldn't leave this responsibility to parents. The the measures that they are talking about bringing in in America Yeah. are things like uh turning off notifications during school time, limiting the number of hours per day to two hours of scrolling, which is still obviously an enormous amount.
Um and also restrictions overnight. Is that the kind of thing you would like to see here or do you or would you want to go further? Well, it's a good uh beginning.
What I would like to do is you you shouldn't be able to see if you're a minor anything that's really bad for your mental health in social media. That's quite hard to define, isn't it? Because what's bad for your mental health is different for different people.
Well, okay. We start with bullying. We start with I don't know anorexia and and body images with you know all all the and unfortunately the is the spectrum of different misuse and social media is so big I mean b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b bingy was obviously bullying the thing that affected you know your your daughter and your family deeply.
What what do you think the platforms could actually do about that? I well listen they have as you can see if they were for a settlement of 17 billions dollars they have the funds to change the the social media in the way that we would like to have a social media. We are not against social media, but we want to save social media that can have a different type of use that can filter all this uh bullying, grooming or all these bad habits and bad misuse of social media and the only the companies has the technology and they have the funds to do it possible.
What has been their approach to you? I mean have they shown you any compassion social media companies? Not at all.
No. No. They never approached me.
We went one to was a house of commons. We have a table with social media companies with other two parents and they were explaining the benefit of social media to the parents to to to us not to to the berean parents and to the rest of the room. So I don't don't think they really care about us.
It's they do their their own business and the business is the use of the algorithm. They transmit information that is not even check in in any subject not even in bullying and and gaming and or or other misuse. It's it's a very has to be regulated.
I'm I'm so sorry to say that but has to be regulated. H how can you see that for 20 years they did like a social experiment with our kids without any type of regulation? What product in any market goes so mainstream without any regulations?
Mariana Janine, thank you very much indeed. You welcome.
