When I joined Facebook in 2009, I believed in the mission that founder Mark Zuckerberg espoused: to connect and empower people around the world. We all know how that turned out. Meta, now the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is focused on generating as much engagement as possible, which has led to platforms that addict, enrage, misinform and polarize users.
I worked at Facebook for 15 years before becoming a whistle-blower. I was in the rooms where smart people built and marketed the features that encourage compulsive use — infinite scroll, autoplay algorithmic feeds. The design choices were made deliberately, with the goal of maximizing profit above all else.
Fortunately, the world is waking up to the harms caused by social media, especially to young people. Earlier this month, an independent panel presented its final report on how the EU can keep children safe online to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, with a legislative proposal expected after the summer.
While several EU countries plan to adopt a blanket age ban, the report advocates banning the toxic design features directly — a strategy that scientific consensus and public opinion support.
If governments really want to keep kids safe, they must require social-media platforms to prove their safety — as is already required of food companies and vehicle manufacturers — to gain access to the teenage market.
The blanket-ban approach treats addictive social media as inevitable. It is not. It is the product of years of corporate lobbying and governments’ reluctance to regulate.
Equally important, such an approach is ineffective. Australia pioneered the world’s first social media ban for minors when it barred users under 16 from holding accounts in December last year. In March, the Australian e-safety commissioner’s compliance report found major enforcement gaps and no reduction in cyberbullying or image-based abuse reports. In April, more than half of 12-to-15-year-olds still had active accounts.
As a result, Australia has also begun to target the toxic features proven to erode kids’ health and well-being.
More governments must turn their attention to banning the design features that harm kids and then holding tech firms to strict, third-party-verified safety standards.
That position has gained broad public support. In a recent poll of five European countries, three-quarters of adults surveyed said that they wanted a “safe-by-design” approach to social media, making platforms inaccessible to children until their safety is proven.
The debate has also entered the courtroom. In February, the European Commission warned TikTok to change its addictive design or face fines of up to 6 percent of turnover. More recently, a preliminary decision by the European Commission found that Meta failed to assess the addiction risks from infinite scrolling and attention capture, putting the firm in breach of the Digital Services Act (DSA).
In the US, four states are seeking US$1.4 trillion in penalties from Meta for designing Facebook and Instagram to addict young users.
Interoperability is another reform worth fighting for. If social media platforms share data, users can switch to safer alternatives without losing their network. That way, they will not be trapped when a platform is, say, bought out by a far-right billionaire who turns it into a cesspit of extremism.
Ultimately, all reforms depend on strong enforcement mechanisms. Governments have tried to regulate social media platforms using voluntary commitments and laws like Australia’s, with fines for violations.
However, the world’s most profitable companies might simply absorb those penalties as a cost of doing business. The consequences must be significant enough that they cannot be priced in.
Europe, which has a track record of shaping the global regulatory environment, now has the opportunity to lead the world in creating effective, meaningful guardrails for children’s online safety. It is promising that Von der Leyen — who, despite experts’ warnings, had committed to a blanket age ban for much of the past year — has signaled a new direction, saying that “the rule in Europe is safety-by-design” when announcing the independent panel’s final report.
While that report recommends age restrictions, it frames them as temporary pending the redesign of addictive and harmful features. It also puts the burden of proving social media’s safety on tech firms, rather than regulators.
The EU already has a head start on a safety-by-design approach: the DSA provides a legislative basis and proof of concept. The special panel cited recent enforcement action under the DSA against TikTok for its addictive features, as well as ongoing proceedings against Snapchat, X/Grok and Meta.
With the shift in the political wind, the EU must enshrine in law a safety-by-design approach, recognizing it as the only viable solution to social-media platforms that were built without regard for the harms they cause. That means expanding this framework in the forthcoming Digital Fairness Act, expected later this year, rather than tinkering at the edges of the rules.
If a social-media platform is stripped of infinite scroll, engagement-optimized defaults and constant push notifications, it is likely much safer for young people. By contrast, an age ban leaves the platform itself unchanged, only delaying its harmful effects. A safety-by-design solution would reduce exposure to a product proven harmful to kids and teens, and reshape market incentives, creating space for safer platforms to compete.
The EU requires most products entering the bloc to be safe by law. Social media should be no different.
Kelly Stonelake, a former Meta executive turned whistle-blower, is an advocate for children’s online safety.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
In 40 years of watching politics, I have never seen anything quite like Taipei mayoral candidate Puma Shen’s (沈伯洋) breed of politician. He has a presence that commands attention, and a combination of qualities that appear to be the result of powerful political currents. What is it that makes Shen different? Throughout the past decades of local elections, I have not seen anyone seriously discuss a long-term vision for urban planning, let alone with the kind of clarity and insight that Shen possesses that compels people to keep listening. He is an exceptional storyteller, with an ability to present a vision
China prefers to win without firing a shot in its bid to strangle Taiwan’s strategic autonomy. Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu (孫子) would have approved. Its central tool at sea is the “cabbage strategy”: the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) layers fishing boats, maritime militia, coast guard cutters and warships around Taiwan’s contested waters in overlapping rings. Each layer normalizes daily coercion, narrows Taiwan’s freedom of movement and chips away at its maritime sovereignty — all while staying below the threshold of armed conflict. This is “gray zone” warfare at its most cost-effective — one of Beijing’s most promising
Taiwanese writer Chu Yu-hsun (朱宥勳) this month spoke out about the difficulties of judging literary competitions when nearly 40 percent of the novel submissions he reviews appear to be generated by artificial intelligence (AI). He said he would refuse to serve as a judge for any literary award that does not explicitly prohibit the use of AI in creative writing. The use of AI in creative and academic work has become increasingly common. My son, who attends National Chengchi University, says he is exasperated after working to complete assignments on his own, only to receive lower grades than classmates who used
Freedom of expression is a precious gift from the times, civilization and history, Hong Kong writer Hon Lai-chu (韓麗珠) said on Wednesday last week when she received the Golden Tripod Award, the highest honor in Taiwan’s publishing industry, for her novel Flesh Mountain (祼山). “As a Hong Konger these days, I deeply feel that the freedom to write and publish should not be taken for granted,” she said. She said that for a reason. Hon, who rarely speaks publicly or accept interviews in Hong Kong because it could result in serious consequences, resigned from her long-running columnist post at the Chinese-language Hong
RSS