Facebook could face millions of dollars in fines from Russia for failing to delete banned content, Moscow's media regulator warns
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Source: RT News
As the tech giant admits targeting kids as young as four, it's time for a grown-up discussion about Facebook and children
October 1, 2021 | By Norman Lewis
As the tech giant admits targeting kids as young as four, it's time for a grown-up discussion about Facebook and children
October 1, 2021 | By Norman Lewis
FILE PHOTO. © Getty Images / Oliver Berg
The 'big' revelation that Facebook has been researching how to attract young children to its platform would only be newsworthy if the social media giant weren't doing so.
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There are many things wrong with Facebook, especially the unaccountable control it exercises over today's public square. But researching how to attract and capture tomorrow's customers is not one of them.
This week’s big 'revelation' was that Facebook drew up plans to tap into children's playdates. According to leaked internal documents revealed by the Wall Street Journal, it formed a special team to study the long-term business opportunities presented by young people, calling them a "valuable but untapped audience". This research included how Facebook could appeal to audiences under 13, and even proposed tailoring some of its features to children aged four and below.
More: Facebook has revealed how it suppresses news it doesn’t like and decides what’s true and what isn't. It's chillingly Orwellian
But those 'revelations' are hardly shocking – the modus operandi is so obvious. Since the emergence of capitalism, every successful consumer company operating in a competitive market has focused on kids as future consumers of their products, and Facebook is no exception. However, given that the success of apps such as TikTok and Snapchat has seen the number of teenagers who use the platform daily fall 19% in two years, and internal Facebook research suggests it could fall by a further 45% by 2023, it is a particularly pressing issue for Zuckerberg and co.
Kids are a valuable and untapped audience. And because they're accessing the internet at an earlier and earlier age, Facebook rightly understands it cannot ignore this sector. As it correctly observes, it has a responsibility to figure it out. But this is complex and highly controversial territory. We’re talking about children – with all the risks and caveats this entails.
The complexity stems from the fact that young people's interaction and use of digital technologies is not a simple question of consumer behaviour, of choice or safeguards against abuse – it's also about how younger generations exist in and interact with the world. The dynamic that created the space for a platform such as Facebook to emerge had little to do with the emergence of digital technology to begin with. Changes in childhood over the decades before the technology existed – particularly the emergence of the risk culture whereby parents developed a greater concern about 'stranger danger' – saw young people adapt these technologies to solve their resultant social isolation from their peers. Digital technologies afforded them the freedom and space to escape the interminable worried gaze of adults.
The rise of bedroom culture as opposed to street culture, also encouraged by parents, meant that, for this generation and those that followed, life would be mediated by social media in ways few adults could comprehend or understand at the time. This was, and remains, the dynamic that underpins the emergence and expansion of social media, and thus companies such as Facebook.
Of course, the added and decisive complication of the rise of social media is that adulthood itself has been infantilised. Like their children, millions of adults now populate the same social media platforms and indulge in the same childish narcissism and self-obsession as their teen offspring.
Please go to RT News to read more.
This week’s big 'revelation' was that Facebook drew up plans to tap into children's playdates. According to leaked internal documents revealed by the Wall Street Journal, it formed a special team to study the long-term business opportunities presented by young people, calling them a "valuable but untapped audience". This research included how Facebook could appeal to audiences under 13, and even proposed tailoring some of its features to children aged four and below.
More: Facebook has revealed how it suppresses news it doesn’t like and decides what’s true and what isn't. It's chillingly Orwellian
But those 'revelations' are hardly shocking – the modus operandi is so obvious. Since the emergence of capitalism, every successful consumer company operating in a competitive market has focused on kids as future consumers of their products, and Facebook is no exception. However, given that the success of apps such as TikTok and Snapchat has seen the number of teenagers who use the platform daily fall 19% in two years, and internal Facebook research suggests it could fall by a further 45% by 2023, it is a particularly pressing issue for Zuckerberg and co.
Kids are a valuable and untapped audience. And because they're accessing the internet at an earlier and earlier age, Facebook rightly understands it cannot ignore this sector. As it correctly observes, it has a responsibility to figure it out. But this is complex and highly controversial territory. We’re talking about children – with all the risks and caveats this entails.
The complexity stems from the fact that young people's interaction and use of digital technologies is not a simple question of consumer behaviour, of choice or safeguards against abuse – it's also about how younger generations exist in and interact with the world. The dynamic that created the space for a platform such as Facebook to emerge had little to do with the emergence of digital technology to begin with. Changes in childhood over the decades before the technology existed – particularly the emergence of the risk culture whereby parents developed a greater concern about 'stranger danger' – saw young people adapt these technologies to solve their resultant social isolation from their peers. Digital technologies afforded them the freedom and space to escape the interminable worried gaze of adults.
The rise of bedroom culture as opposed to street culture, also encouraged by parents, meant that, for this generation and those that followed, life would be mediated by social media in ways few adults could comprehend or understand at the time. This was, and remains, the dynamic that underpins the emergence and expansion of social media, and thus companies such as Facebook.
Of course, the added and decisive complication of the rise of social media is that adulthood itself has been infantilised. Like their children, millions of adults now populate the same social media platforms and indulge in the same childish narcissism and self-obsession as their teen offspring.
Please go to RT News to read more.
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Related:
Related:
Russia demands explanation from Facebook over blocked accounts
Putin signs law mandating Twitter, Facebook to open offices in Russia
Russia could ban YouTube after it deleted two RT channels it said spread COVID misinformation
Russian cybersecurity firm boss arrested on 'high treason' charges in secret police raid after allegedly spying for foreign nation
Jacinda's Fakebook Post — 30,000 Comments Expose Vax Injury and Deaths
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