Protecting minors on social media

As part of MEDA's recent multi-billion dollar settlement to resolve claims of addiction and safety concerns among minors, the company is now required to implement new protections for young users, including daily time limits and nighttime blocks. This has many parents asking, do these changes go far enough and can I better protect my children online? Joining us this morning to discuss this is the CEO of Pinwheel, Dane Whitbeck. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me. Well, so first off, what is your reaction to this ruling? It doesn't go far enough to protect kids. Yeah, I think it's a great step in the right direction, but we have to look at what is social media really. Social media, you could think of it as like a restaurant that serves free food, and that sounds great, but when you walk in you realize that all the waiters are trying to sell you a timeshare in Florida, or they're trying to sell you a used car, you know, so their business model is really about empowering these companies to come in and sell you something. So what kind of food would this restaurant serve? It's gonna serve really unhealthy food that's gonna keep you there for as long as possible. Sugary food, candy, donuts, that kind of thing, and if you stayed there all day, you'd be very unhealthy if that's all you ate, right? And so what has this done? It's basically said, hey, this is harming kids. If they come in here and they spend all their time here, they're not getting the healthy diet that they need, and this is more for your brain than your actual body. So they've put in an age gate, first of all, so when you walk in the restaurant, they can determine, are you a minor or are you an adult? That's supposed to be required. Now, will that work? Yet to be seen, but they're supposed to be filtering these kids into the kids section, and in the kids section, a few things will change. So the plate size would be smaller. That would be something like the algorithm is gonna be slightly different. You can get a chronological feed instead of a purely algorithmic-driven feed. And a few other things, like time limits, a two-hour time limit, blocks during school hours, blocks overnight. So these are good things. These are things that are moving in the right direction, but has the restaurant changed? Is it really doing anything different than it did before? No. Its motivation is still to sell you things while you go in there, while giving you free foods. So it's a step in the right direction, but our advice is, of course, to keep kids off of social media. Just keep them out. And if you back up out of the restaurant and look around in the digital world, you're actually in a town or city full of different types of businesses, which are, I would call, different apps, right? Different places that you could be or that your kids could be. And so, yeah, sometimes we go too far and say, hey, I don't want my kids on any technology whatsoever, and I just want them out of this place. Well, it turns out, what you really want is out of that restaurant, and you want to prepare your kids for the future. And in their future, it's going to be a continually technologically driven future, where they're going to need skills to do well and to not just survive, but really to thrive in this place. And so we think it's about helping kids step by step, to really start easy. And so what we do is change the entire street you're on. We change it to a kid's street. So everything is really there for kids and to help you as a parent raise a kid to learn to thrive in this kind of environment before moving on. And even with these new restrictions, I mean, I remember when I was a preteen on MySpace, I mean, you just put a different year for your birthday and you're on. I mean, are kids still going to be able to get around these restrictions? It's highly likely that many kids will get around the restrictions. I think we all kind of know that. When you're dealing with the, you know, millions and millions of people, certainly helping, you know, many of them to get into this kids section of the restaurant, it's going to be helpful. But yes, kids will get around it. It won't be foolproof. And again, the restaurant's motivations haven't changed. And talk to me a little bit about pinwheel and what you guys are doing so kids can have a guided way to work through technology. Yeah, it's more about a step by step process. So we have a number of products starting with a landline phone. That's like an old school eighties or nineties phone so kids can learn to talk first before text and that products available now. And then you've got a watch where kids can be sort of know where you can know where they are. If they're to spend the night or that sort of thing, you can get a hold of them and really no surface area on social media, really nothing addictive or harmful there, but a way for them to start to get introduced to technology. And then as your kids get older, maybe in the middle school, you're looking at a smartphone product that has a curated set of apps that really again changes that street that you're on. So, you know, it just has good apps for kids and many parental descriptions. So you can see, okay, what's in this app? What should I allow? What should I not allow? And then it has a step by step guide to help your kids get more and more access as they age. So it's not the same for a 16 year old as 11 year old. And so you're sort of helping to ramp them into the digital world in a thought out way. And my last question, because I know a lot of people wonder what's the best age to get a kid a smartphone and then when should they be on social media? Yeah, I think it's hard to nail down like one age because as we know, as parents, your kids are very different. So, you know, definitely follow their lead. But we say that, you know, a smartphone like a pinwheel is really fine anytime in middle school. Um, and because it starts safe, it's great. And then for social media, we're looking at definitely nothing earlier than 16 for my kids. It will be 18. Okay. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us and for all that helpful information. Thank you. We'll be right back.