At least half of the safety features on Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube that are supposed to protect children online are not working properly. This is said a study by a team from New York and Northeastern universities, which Engadget cites.
The researchers tested 86 safety features on four platforms and concluded that on each of them at least half of the tools do not fulfill the stated tasks. In particular, these are mechanisms that are supposed to prohibit adults from writing to children or limit minors’ access to harmful content.
To test, the team created fictitious accounts that imitated children of different ages and adult users. The researchers tested three scenarios: a child’s normal use of the social network, a teenager’s attempt to bypass protective features, and an adult’s attempt to bypass restrictions on a child’s account.
A feature was considered to be malfunctioning if it was difficult to find in the settings, if it did not perform the stated tasks, or was absent from the platform. Among the examples, the researchers cited the ability of adult accounts on Snapchat to find a child’s profile without restrictions and send them messages. They also stated that TikTok recommended search queries related to anorexia to teen accounts.
Representatives of Snap, Meta, and YouTube disagreed with the study’s conclusions. Meta stated that the Teen Accounts feature helps teens see less sensitive content, encounter less unwanted contacts, and use Instagram less at night.
At the same time, The New York Times reported that it was able to reproduce the results of the study. His findings come amid increased regulation of children’s access to social media in various countries and numerous lawsuits accusing platforms of harming minors.
