After watching The Social Dilemma, I have been fascinated with how to world (i.e. consumers and legislators) would respond to the overwhelming data that shows that the very technology that was supposed to "bring us together" is in fact dividing us, isolating us, and making us depressed...especially children.
This week, a group of legislators wrote a letter to Zuck which focused first on privacy concerns, and children's ability to circumvent barriers to get around both privacy and age barriers, and interact with the world at large. Additionally, there was a bi-partisan call to action to better understand what Facebook and Instagram were doing about the growing concerns affecting mental health.
Most importantly to our class efforts, congress asked that Facebook and Instagram to "commit to not targeting kids with ads" and remove "behavior-shaping features designed to make apps more addictive" if they want to keep their younger user base.
This will be an ongoing battle as both age, feature design, and targeted advertising will come into sharper focus and the outcome will influence the future of the entire digital marketing design landscape.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/06/markey-letter-instagram-kids/
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