Tools to keep your kids safe on social media have ‘critical’ flaws, study finds. So is there any hope of protecting them?

Tools to keep your kids safe on social media have ‘critical’ flaws, study finds. So is there any hope of protecting them? The new study investigated more than 80 safety features across four top social media platforms - Bookmark - CommentsGo to comments How to keep children safe on social media has become a hot-button issue - and new research suggesting many online safety tools for kids may have “critical” flaws will only add fuel to that fire. Researchers tested 86 safety features across four social media platforms — Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube — and found about 60 percent of those tools “do not live up” to the promises made by these companies. “If you are a parent, you should know that we have found systemic issues with the design and implementation of many of these features,” reads the report from online safety nonprofit, Heat Initiative and the Cybersafety Research Center, a multi-university initiative led by researchers from New York University and Northeastern University. But parents can take their own steps to ensure their kids are safe online, experts told The Independent. “I think it's really about knowing your child. Understanding not just the platform, but how you see them engage and interact with their friends or with other people as they're using their devices and engaging online,” said Jasmine Hood Miller, director of family resources and content strategy at the nonprofit Common Sense Media. ‘Critical and pervasive’ safety failures The new 58-page study, which relied on a “methodical independent analysis” of social media safety tools, claims there were “critical and pervasive” safety failures. The authors included a multi-page description of their methodology, along with specific examples of tools they said “failed.” The New York Times also reported that it was able to replicate many of the report’s findings To evaluate each safety feature, the research team assessed whether it "actually functions as described, and whether a child can realistically reach it," and only counted it as successful if it did both. The researchers investigated a number of the companies’ safety promises, including that “children cannot search for dangerous content, and that such queries will be intercepted, blocked, and the child redirected to crisis resources.” On Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat, the research states that “simply misspelling or not finishing the search query (e.g., typing ‘eating dis’ instead of ‘eating disorder’) was enough to bypass the restrictions” that prevent kids from searching dangerous content. Meanwhile, YouTube “did not surface harmful content in our testing, but would allow harmful search teams to be bypassed by clicking a button to confirm you may be exposed to sensitive material,” the report said. Researchers also tested 10 “conduct tools,” which are designed to keep users safe when interacting with one another, and found the tools “failed” across all four platforms. The social media platforms pushed back on the report when contacted byThe Independent. A spokesperson for Meta, Instagram’s parent company, called the report “fundamentally flawed” and said it “demonstrates a basic misunderstanding of how our tools work.” Meta also said users searching for eating disorder content are directed to support resources, and that the company works to block those search terms, including those that are misspelled. “The authors include vague claims that our features are broken but, in the vast majority of cases, either misrepresent those features or fail to provide any examples or evidence. The reality is that with Teen Accounts, teens are seeing less sensitive content, experiencing less unwanted contact, and spending less time on Instagram at night,” Meta’s spokesperson said. A spokesperson for Snap, Snapchat’s parent company, said many of the report’s findings “are based on researchers intentionally taking actions to bypass protections that are not representative of the typical user experience,” adding that the platform is “continually evaluating and strengthening our protections, tools, and working alongside external organizations to help create a positive experience for our community.” A TikTok U.S. spokesperson explained that the platform’s teen accounts come with “over 50 preset safety features and settings automatically turned on, with additional choices for parents through our easy-to-use Family Pairing tool,” and said an internal review “confirms these features are working as intended." The spokesperson also pushed back on the report, claiming the functionality of TikTok’s tools were mischaracterized. A YouTube spokesperson told The Independent: "We’ve spent over a decade building industry-leading parental controls, which is why 84 percent of parents who have used YouTube supervised account tools said they agree that these tools give them confidence that their child is accessing a safer and more controlled digital environment. We will continue to strengthen these protections and innovate to protect families who use YouTube." The researchers also noted that, unlike the other social media platforms, "all of YouTube’s promised features were triggerable, and were all evaluated fully." Social media companies face restrictions Social media companies are facing a mounting number of legal challenges over the impacts of their platforms on children. Earlier this year, in a civil case brought in California, a jury found YouTube and Meta liable for creating platforms that are addictive for minors. As concerns over the long-term damage grow, countries across the world are starting to introduce strict online restrictions for children. Australia, Indonesia and the U.K. have all moved to ban certain major social media platforms for those under 16. U.S. lawmakers are honing in on online safety too, with the House of Representatives passing the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act last month. Supporters have said the bill would help protect children online, while critics have expressed privacy and free speech concerns. What can parents do? There are concrete steps parents can take to mitigate risks for their children online, experts told The Independent. Those can include requiring kids to share passwords to their accounts and setting expectations about social media use when they first get access, according to Dr. Joel Stoddard, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Children’s Hospital Colorado. “It's much harder to walk back boundaries than to set the expectation upfront,” he said. Setting time limits can help curb over-usage, but Dr. Stoddard recommends linking these boundaries to a “specific event, time of day, or ritual.” For example, parents could allow their children to use social media for a set amount of time after they complete their homework. Parents should also familiarize themselves with the platforms, be thoughtful about what age they introduce social media and have open conversations with their kids, according to Hood Miller of Common Sense Media. “The large majority of the more popular platforms are just not designed for kids when it comes to the safety measures, the access to other people, information, harmful content, inappropriate content that they can come across even without intentionally looking for it,” she said. ”As parents, we have to do a little homework on understanding the features, the parental controls that may be in place for you to set their account up safely and have some guardrails, depending on your child's age,” she added. For Stoddard, the conversation around social media is important for everyone, not just kids and parents. “I think it's really important to be thoughtful, to work with your community to build the standards that will help you and your family grow up and live in a world that you want to,” he said. Join our commenting forum Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies Comments