Social media giant Meta says banning young people from its platforms won't work, but supporters of a law change are crying foul, saying the owner of Facebook and Instagram is using the same tactics as big tobacco.
The National Party last year launched a members' bill pushing for a youth ban. The law change is also supported by Labour.
The bill aimed to protect under-16-year-olds from harm on social media.
Meta vice president and global head of safety Antigone Davis was in Auckland on Tuesday, showcasing Instagram's Teen Accounts.
They feature built-in restrictions on content, as well as time limit reminders and ways for parents to monitor who their teen is chatting with online.
Davis said banning platforms for under-16s wouldn't solve the problem.
"It sounds really good, it feels like it's going to solve the problem, but you can't make a ban for the entire internet. So what you do is you make it for a set of apps, and what we've seen already in Australia is teens download other apps. They try to go around the system," she said.
There was room to look at how to address the issue, Davis said.
"Even in New Zealand, I think there's a little bit of a step back," Davis said.
"'Okay, this ban sounds interesting, it makes sense to us, let's take a little bit of time to think about it,' I think in that time is a real opportunity to think about what we're trying to accomplish and how can we do it best."
Meta says banning social media platforms for under-16s wouldn't solve the problem. Photo: Victor Okhrimets / 123RF
Meta said it had data showing the majority of parents they surveyed in New Zealand wanted to decide if their under-16-year-old had access to social media - not leave it up to the government.
That was in contrast to recent polls showing support for a ban.
The B416 campaign had been pushing for restrictions and its academic advisor, Dr Samantha Marsh of the University of Auckland, said Meta was using the same strategy as big tobacco.
"Trying to put the onus on the individual, the parent or the child, and with respect to social media, they frame it in a way that it sounds like it's empowering," she said.
She said an age restriction of 16 is an important first step.
"Alone, I wouldn't expect a massive change in behaviour or anything like that, and it's not going to be perfect initially, it's going to need lots of tweaking, and Australia is well aware of that," Marsh said.
"But they were quite clear that we can't wait for this to be perfect before we implement it, and I think that's really important, and that's the approach that we should be taking in New Zealand."
Marsh said there were many things that needed to go along with age restrictions.
"Just like big tobacco, these companies want to continue to not have the responsibility placed on themselves but place it on the individual, which allows them to go continue to make money, and profit off the harm that's being caused to our children."
Meta and other social media platforms have been on trial in the United States over claims their apps were designed to be harmful to young people.
Senior University of Auckland law lecturer Joshua Yuvaraj connected the case to what was known as dark patterns, designed to confuse or manipulate users. He said algorithms had a big part to play.
"It's a question of does the social media company actively target, [and] are they aware of the particular vulnerabilities of the populations which make up their users?" Yuvaraj said.
Antigone Davis said Meta had launched tools to help users tailor their algorithm to what they want to see.
"One of the things that we've recently launched is something called Tune Your Algorithm," she said.
"It's for both teens and adults. What it does is it allows you as a user to say 'I want to see more of this and I want to see less of this'."
"We already have transparency tools in place so people can see exactly how their algorithm is working, but we want to give people a sense of being able to really control that experience."
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has said he would introduce the bill before this year's election.
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