New research from the Cybersafety Research Center has found that more than half of social media child safety features aren’t working as advertised, leaving young users vulnerable to harm. The study tested 86 youth safety features across TikTok, Instagram, Snap, and YouTube, and found that only 35 of those features successfully met the criteria of being easy to find and use, and effectively preventing harm.
Methodology
Researchers created two sets of test accounts: those with birthdates associated with minors to test child safety features, and adult accounts ages 25 and older to test restrictions on interactions with children. They tested whether a young person using the platforms normally would encounter the features, whether a teen attempting to circumvent the features would succeed, and whether an adult user could bypass restrictions on messaging minors.
Features were categorized as failures if they were buried in settings and hard to find, broken because they did not function to prevent harm as advertised, or both. Nine features were also labeled as ‘missing’ because researchers couldn’t trigger them even when they tried.
Findings
The report found that YouTube, Instagram, and Snap largely disputed the report’s findings, arguing that their features work as intended or that the tests did not represent typical use of the platforms by kids and teens. TikTok did not respond to requests for comment on the report.
The study also raised questions about Snapchat and Instagram’s efforts to block adult strangers from messaging with young users. On Snapchat, researchers using an adult test account said they were able to find and message a child account with no restrictions.
The report points to a 2021 press release from Meta which says that Instagram restricts people over 19-years-old from sending private messages to teens who don’t follow them. However, the report found that this is not strictly true, as the adult is able to send messages to a child unrestricted after contact has been initiated, even if the child does not follow them back.
Original reporting: 40/29 / KHBS (NW Arkansas) — read the source article.
