Parents aren’t using parental controls on Facebook and Instagram, according to Nick Clegg of Meta, and adults aren’t adopting the 50 child safety tools the company has introduced in recent years.
Meta’s head of global affairs said there was a “behavioural problem” around the use of the tools, after admitting parents were ignoring them. Regulatory pressure is mounting on tech companies to protect children from harmful content, with the Australian government this week announcing plans to ban younger teenagers from accessing social media.
Speaking at an event hosted by Chatham House in London, Clegg said parents were not using controls that would allow them Set time limits and schedule breaks to watch the movie..
“One of the things we find is that even when we create these controls, parents don’t use them,” he said. “So we have a bit of a behavioral problem, which is: we as an engineering company can create these things, and then say in events like this, ‘Oh, we’ve given parents options to restrict the amount of time that kids are (online),’ parents don’t use them.”
Clegg, a former UK deputy prime minister, said evidence suggested Meta’s apps provided a positive experience for the “overwhelming majority of young people”. However, 2021 testimony from a whistleblower at the company, Frances Haugen, accused the Facebook and Instagram owner of putting profits before safety, while Instagram’s safeguarding problems were highlighted in the 2022 inquest into the death of British teenager Molly Russell, who killed herself after viewing harmful content.
In the UK, the Internet Safety Act has been passed, imposing specific requirements on social media companies to protect children from harmful content. The issue remains a priority for many governments, including Australia, where Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced plans to block children from accessing social media and other digital platforms unless they are of a certain age, likely to be between 14 and 16.
Asked whether Meta would enforce such a ban, Clegg said the company would “of course” comply, but warned it would be difficult to implement and would require cooperation from Google and Apple’s app stores.
Andy Burrows, chief executive of the Molly Rose Foundation, a charity set up by Russell’s family, said: “Nick Clegg would be doing children’s safety a favour if he stopped passing the buck and started taking responsibility for the avoidable harm caused by Meta’s decisions.”
Clegg also addressed the controversy over Elon Musk’s Platform X, which he said had become, under the Tesla CEO’s ownership, something of a “hyper-partisan, one-man ideological workhorse.”
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Clegg said X and messaging app Telegram had allowed far-right figures such as Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, and misogynist influencer Andrew Tate to “run amok” online in the wake of the UK riots linked to the Southport murders, after they had been banned from the Meta platforms.
Clegg added that X was a small platform “for the elites”. “I think it’s a tiny app, for the elites, obsessed with news and politics. The vast majority of people join Facebook and Instagram for much more recreational reasons,” he said.