EU opens investigation into Meta over addictive social media effects on kids | Parami News

On Thursday, EU regulators opened up investigations into the American tech giant Meta amid concerns that Facebook and Instagram were addictive to children and young people. This move has far-reaching implications since it touches on the foundations of how its products are made.

Meta’s products might create behavior addictions that endanger their mental well-being by taking advantage of minors’ weaknesses and inexperience, according to a statement from the European Commission, the executive arm of the 27-nation bloc.If imposed, however, such fines would represent about 6% of its global revenue for 2021 which stood at $135 billion.

According to them, these measures are part of a broader campaign by governments all over the world against apps like TikTok and Instagram in order to protect underage citizens. For many years now, Meta has been criticized for allegedly fine-tuning its services and recommendation algorithms targeting children.

These investigations were also said to have been shared with US counterparts by EU regulators on Thursday too. In particular, they could be found in breach of Digital Services Act that was enacted last year which demands large online platforms more strictly check their content for illegalities while also having policies protecting minors.“We will now investigate in-depth the potential addictive and ‘rabbit hole’ effects of the platforms, the effectiveness of their age verification tools, and the level of privacy afforded to minors in the functioning of recommender systems,” Thierry Breton who oversees these inquiries as Commissioner for Internal Market noted.” We are sparing no effort to protect our children.”

“Meta stated on Thursday that social media is safe for young people as there are features allowing parents and kids limit time spent on Instagram/Facebook.” Moreover teenagers fall into more restricted content + recommendations categories automatically. Of course Meta’s advertisers cannot target ads at under-aged users. nytimes