‘Tech firms are losing the public’: social media age bans near tipping point

Arturo Béjar, a former employee turned whistleblower at Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, has talked to parents around the world. He says they share the same perspective: they dread the day their children are old enough to go online. Governments appear to be listening too. This month the UK became the latest country to state that it would set a minimum age of 16 for accessing major social media platforms. Social media bans are becoming a legislative trend after the precedent set by Australia last year, when it imposed an age limit on platforms including Meta’s Instagram and Facebook, Google’s YouTube, Elon Musk’s X, TikTok and Snapchat. “I’ve spoken to parents from several countries, and I have yet to meet a parent of young kids who is not dreading when they’re old enough to go online. Or a young person who has not experienced something awful and preventable,” Béjar said. In the US, tech companies have been lobbying against the Kids Online Safety Act. Photograph: Hollie Adams/Reuters Béjar, 55, was a senior engineer and consultant at Meta. He was a witness at recent trials in the US that ruled Meta was liable for deliberately designing addictive products and had misled consumers about the safety of its platforms. The trial in California in particular received coverage that will not have dissuaded politicians around the world from taking action. “They [social media platforms] keep showing the world why we can’t trust them,” he said. …