Social media companies before Oireachtas Committee
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The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance. Now, representatives from tech companies Meta, TikTok, Snap, Google and Microsoft have been appearing before the Oireachtas Committee on Children and Equality to discuss online safety this morning. And our chief reporter, Barry White, has been monitoring all of this and he's with me here in the studio. Barry, hello to you.
Hi Clare.
Thanks for coming in. Now, these social media companies, they've been trying to reassure the TDs and Senators at the committee about children's safety online.
Yeah, so representatives from social media giants, Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, Google and Microsoft have been this morning, I suppose, trying to convince members of the Oireachtas Committee on Children and Equality that they are committed to ensuring children's safety online.
What are social media companies discussing about children's online safety?
And at the beginning of today's committee, Fine Gael T.D. Grace Boland Ask what social media companies are doing to stop teenagers from accessing harmful content in particular. And Dulta O'Briain from Meta, which owns the Facebook and Instagram platforms, explain what measures they've taken.
What are you actually doing in terms of the recommender systems and the algorithms? We know kids are seeing inappropriate content so it really is incumbent upon you to make sure that there is safety by design built into your algorithms and that kids are seeing age appropriate content.
We fundamentally changed the approach for how teens use our services so we have teen accounts now in place. There's two buckets within that. The content that they see within that as well, we've changed how that works as well. So we are focused now on this 13 plus similar type of content that you would see in a movie of that type. The type of things that are, you know, Ruled out there would be dangerous stunts or dangerous pranks, etc. But there's also an additional step that parents can take in terms of going further than that 13 plus type of content and limiting the content even further.
And Barry, the representatives from the social media companies, they were asked if their platforms are designed to be addictive.
Yeah, again, Finne Gael, TD, Grace Boland asked this question straight out. And later on during the committee, the representatives from Meta, TikTok, Snap, Google and Microsoft were pushed even further on this. They were asked what they do to stop their platforms from being addictive. Now, they all said that their platforms are not designed to be addictive. However, I'm sure there's many people listening now who might raise an eyebrow at that. I certainly did when I was watching the committee live. I'm sure many parents... would raise an eyebrow when they hear that social media platforms are saying that these, you know, the likes of TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook are not designed to be addictive.
But I think even adults like ourselves would sometimes find ourselves looking through our phone and the next thing you've an hour's passed by. However, Richard Collard from TikTok, he says the restrictions in place in particular to stop teenagers from scrolling too long.
Is it designed to be addictive?
No, we wouldn't say it's designed to be addictive. I think one thing that we do know that people care a lot about is screen time and the amount of time people spend on the platform. And that's why we've introduced a number of restrictions and frictions in our system. So we have a 60 minute screen time limit by default for everyone under 18 on the platform. That means that if you're a teen using TikTok and you're scrolling and you reach that 60 minute, there's a full screen takeover and you're expected to enter a code to continue using the platform.
So what have they said that they're doing about harmful content specifically, Barry?
Yeah, so just a few minutes ago, Senator Sharon Keoghan, Independent Senator Sharon Keoghan, said that she recently heard from schoolchildren who told her that they were spending 68 hours a day on social media platforms. And a lot of the content that they came across was sometimes misogynistic.
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