By Mary Alice Miller
Your friendly neighborhood tech bro may know something the rest of us don’t.
In a recent New York Times article, Silicon Valley tech founders and investors limit their own children’s access to screen time.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates did not give his children cellphones until they were 14. Apple’s Tim Cook would not let his nephew on social media. Snap’s chief executive Evan Spiegel allowed 90 minutes a week of screen time for his 7-year-old.
Lawsuits seemed to be the only protection from social media and screen time that tech bros push on other people’s children.
Accused of designing it’s platforms to be addictive for young users, while violating federal child privacy and states’ consumer protection laws, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, reached a $17 billion settlement with a coalition of state attorneys general.
Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, agreed to the financial settlement and make changes to his social media applications.
In 2023, Attorney General James and a coalition of 32 other attorneys general sued Meta for designing and implementing features that it knew to be harmful to children and teens in order to maximize their time on its social media platforms.
New York’s share of the settlement is about $1 billion, scheduled to be paid over ten years.
The funds are intended to support mental health services, education programs, and other efforts to repair and reduce the harm caused by unhealthy social media use among young people.
New York State Attorney General Letitia James’ office issued a statement that outlined proposed changes to the way Meta’s social media apps function.
Meta must also take steps to verify the ages of its users and restrict the time minors can spend on its platforms to a maximum of two hours per day. In addition, Meta will restrict minors from accessing its platforms at night and prevent notifications from being sent to minors during school hours and in the evening. Children and their parents will have the option to opt out of addictive algorithmic feeds. Age verification and parental controls will also be strengthened.
The company will limit features linked to negative social comparisons, like beauty filters and tallying of “like” button clicks.
To avoid addictive use and sleep interruptions, the company will limit usage between midnight and 6 a.m. and silence notifications during school hours of 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
“Children in New York and nationwide are suffering while companies like Meta reap immense profits by intentionally addicting them to their social media platforms,” said Attorney General James. “We cannot allow social media companies to continue fueling the growing rates of low self-esteem, isolation, and depression among our youth.”
She added, “With significant new resources for our communities and comprehensive restrictions on Meta’s platforms for young people, we are taking a major step towards breaking the cycle of social media addiction. This groundbreaking plan sets a standard of reforms for all social media platforms, and I will continue to work to extend these protections across the industry.”
In order to establish an industrywide standard with other social media companies, Meta designed the settlement to initially payout $12 billion. It will pay an additional $5 billion if Snap, TikTok and YouTube also settle with the states and agree to financial penalties and product changes.
The settlement is the first of its kind with the states.
Meta faces numerous other lawsuits from individuals and school districts that view social media as a distraction and nuisance.
Social media continues to be protected from what users post on their platforms under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
The coalition of states originally sued for up to $200 billion.
Meta saw the writing on the wall. In March, Meta and YouTube paid out $6 million in damages in their first personal injury case.
The impact of technology goes beyond social media.
Recently, the Council on Criminal Justice hosted a webinar entitled “Policing in the Digital Age: Balancing Public Safety and Privacy.”
Khalil Cumberbatch opened the event with an overview of the issues.
“Technology has transformed nearly every aspect of our daily lives. We communicate through smartphones, navigate with GPS, store our lives in the cloud, and increasingly rely on artificial intelligence to help us make decisions, solve problems, and process enormous amounts of information very quickly,” said Cumberbatch. “Those same technological advances are transforming how crimes are investigated, how evidence is gathered, and how law enforcement works to protect communities.”
He continued, “At the same time, these innovations raise important constitutional and policy questions. As investigative tools become more sophisticated, so too must our understanding of privacy, government authority, and protections guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment. Public safety and civil liberties are not competing ideals.”
The event explored how emerging technologies are already being used in policing and criminal investigations, what guardrails should exist as artificial intelligence becomes more integrated into investigative work, and what roles should courts, legislatures, law enforcement agencies, and technology companies play in shaping the future of surveillance.
Some of the technologies discussed were AI, facial recognition, geofence warrants, and license plate readers.
“Technology isn’t inherently the problem; it’s how people use it. Through history, every police innovation has come up with some sort of skepticism, from fingerprint analysis to DNA to the implementation of tasers to body-worn cameras to drones. All of them arguably created some concerns when they were introduced,” said Jason Potts, Director, Las Vegas Dept. of Public Safety. “We can still honor our civil liberties and have constitutional principles while still impacting public safety.”
“What is the problem we are trying to solve, and will technology help or hurt? I push back on the question of whether we are balancing civil liberties and public safety. When they developed the Fourth Amendment, it wasn’t because they were trying to create a balance,” said Jumana Musa, Director, Fourth Amendment Center, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “It was literally to create restrictions on state authority to come and rummage through people’s lives. It didn’t imagine any technology, not fingerprinting, not DNA, not drones, not face recognition.”
Musa cautioned, “Right now, the state of affairs is that law enforcement can do a lot with the tools that are being provided to them, far more than ever imagined, and without the restrictions that used to apply. Now, in the Carpenter decision, the Supreme Court said you don’t even have to know ahead of time you want to track somebody. You can go back and recreate their entire movement over time without ever having known that you wanted to ahead of time.”
Regarding device search, Musa said, “When it comes to a phone or computer, the Supreme Court has already recognized your cell phone contains all the privacies of life. It is more invasive than searching a house. They are treating these devices as a search free-for-all.”