John Chandler, a data science assistant professor at the University of St. Thomas, spoke with the Minnesota Star Tribune and FOX 9 about Meta’s landmark settlement with Minnesota and other states over concerns about teen social media use. Chandler discussed how measures such as screen-time limits, nighttime restrictions and interruptions to infinite scrolling could help protect young users and give parents greater control over their children’s social media use.
From Minnesota Star Tribune:
Although social media companies try to restrict access to users 13 years and older, age gates remain easy to circumvent, said University of St. Thomas data science professor John Chandler. The result, he said, is that many kids experience the world in the same way all consumers do.
Besides the monetary award, Chandler said Meta is now showing a commitment to “putting in place things we know will help.” Some of those include interrupting the endless scroll, which prevents users from reaching a natural stopping point.
“I think that this is a landmark moment in our ability to change the balance of power between consumers and these large tech companies,” he said, calling the user restrictions “a big win.”
From FOX9:
Symone Woolridge: From what you have seen and also heard from a marketing perspective, why are teenagers such an important audience for Meta to focus on?
John Chandler: Teenagers are important for a couple reasons. A big one is teenagers basically define what’s cool in society, right? Every company, every brand is trying to attract more young people. They’re the tastemakers.
Also, the habits that we form when we’re young, and particularly in relationship to companies, can persist into adulthood. So somebody who’s using Instagram a lot as a teenager is likely to grow up to be somebody who uses Instagram a lot. And so these young users represent future adults that Meta can make money from across their whole lifetime with the platform.
Woolridge: If you think about it, $17.1 billion. We’re talking about a lot of money here within this settlement. When you think about the business model moving forward, what do you think could be done? What else could be done here, or is this at least a steppingstone?
Chandler: It’s a steppingstone. There are a number of other cases; I’m involved with legal cases related to school districts. So school districts have sued the social media platforms in an effort to recoup some of the costs they’ve spent working on teenage mental health.
