Geneva – The United Nations on Thursday called for child-safe design across the social media industry after tech giant Meta agreed to sweeping limits on teen use of Facebook and Instagram in some U.S. states. Meta agreed to pay a coalition of U.S. states as much as $16.7 billion and to impose the limits, according to a court filing on Wednesday ending a landmark trial in California. The settlement resolved claims by 29 states that Meta deliberately engineered its platforms to hook young users, misled the public about the risks and unlawfully collected data from children under 13.
Some 51 states and territories, plus Washington, DC, initially settled with Meta. Texas reached a separate agreement with Meta, which increased the total payout to around $18 billion. Governments need to step up rather than wait for courts and companies to act.” Back in May, Turk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, called for tougher measures by governments and tech firms to make online platforms safe places for children, through better design, data protection, regulation, oversight and accountability.
He called for action to ensure that “those responsible for harm can held to account.” Turk said simply focusing on age restrictions would leave unaltered the designs and algorithms that made the platforms unsafe in the first place. The U.N. rights chief also said experience so far showed that bans could be easily circumvented and voiced concern that such bans could even end up pushing children to riskier, even less monitored platforms. Earlier this year, the U.N. rights office produced a set of 10 guidelines entitled “Getting Children’s Safety Online Right.” These included ensuring the maximum protection of children’s data as a default setting, while the “micro-targeting” of children for commercial purposes, based on a digital record, “should not be permitted.” They said emerging concerns such as restrictions on artificial intelligence chatbot use or addictive design features may warrant age restrictions.
Measures should be subject to independent oversight, with legal consequences that serve as deterrents, the guidelines said. There should also be access to remedy for children whose rights are violated, they said. Peggy Hicks, the U.N. human rights office’s thematic and special procedures director, warned at a press conference in May that tech companies faced a choice: “change how their platforms are designed and operated to better protect children’s rights and safety; or be forced to do so through increasingly restrictive legislation, jury verdicts, and regulatory fines.”
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