UAE teens on Instagram: Parents fear kids bypassing controls
Parents in the UAE especially have welcomed, albeit with some trepidation, the recent announcement from tech giant Meta that it will be rolling out creating accounts for teenagers with controls on privacy and parent authorisation.
This announcement was made by Instagram on Tuesday when she stated that it will set some features that will ensure that most accounts created by children like teenagers are turned to be private and limit the type of materials that can be viewed on such an account.
“Luckily, it’s a necessary step in the right direction,” said Dubai based SunMoney Solar Group Zoltan Rendes who also claims to be a father of a 13-year old son. “At the moment, it's like the Wild West out there – anything goes there, and it shouldn’t be. Young users of the internet need the protection of strong laws that prevent them from exposure to harmful content, fraudulent activities, and radical ideas.”
In the official Instagram page of the company, the new updates are said to provide parents ‘peace of mind that their teens are safe’ and that ‘allows teens to get one more feature where they have the ability to select topics they want to see more of’.
Still, some teenagers in the UAE, for instance, were indifferent to the initiative and explained why there was a need to change. Rhetoric is one thing, quite another how it affects people, and that’s why, for instance, young kids aged six or seven use social media – a viewpoint 16-year-old Rhea Nihalani interprets. “New rule would not be enforced with such an effect as mostly everybody gives it hopes for. Looking at how and what children and teens are allowed to post and view sites until they are fifteen years, I think we are just postponing the inevitable crush once they pass that age.”
Bandage Solutions
Rather unsurprisingly, this is why, or rather to what extent, Meta decided to act, after years of being urged by various quarters to do something about its teen audience. Still, Omer Khan who is the Founder and CEO of mental health platform Helply said the step clearly looks like a sticking plaster on a gaping wound.
“Relying on psychological understanding, more means to teenagers in privacy settings empower them and other members to be less exposed to harmful content, bullying, and other requests,” he said.
“It's essential to keep in mind, however, that this only mitigates the risks, but does not completely solve the underlying issues. Even with privacy settings, for example, a teenager is likely to feel the effects of social comparison – one of the risk factors of mental disorders. When kids look at idealistic portrayals of their friends' lives, they may feel excessive pressure and suffer from low self-worth. More importantly, not even limiting exposure to certain content will eliminate the problem; content is not the core of the problem to begin with,” he continued.
Misha Akbar, who established Sama Health, reflected that as a mental health clinician and a mother of a teenager, she took the announcement with a “grain of salt.” “While I can see how these tools are a positive development, that is all they are, one piece of the jigsaw,” he stated. “As parents, we should not only take that approach of placing limits and restrictions on our teenagers but also have very frank discussions about social media and its effects on their mental health. It is about providing the tools and the strength to handle their online environment.”
She mentioned that she was waiting both for the curiosity and the protest and wondered how much the teenagers would be annoyed. “I think, it is still important to achieve a middle ground without being too authoritarian,” she said. “The only thing which is left is how teenagers will embrace this post. My son appeared to be apathetic possibly because we established borders and regulations beforehand.”
Hitting the nail on the head
As per Omar, the movement may backfire creating a ‘whack-a-mole effect’ whereby teenagers shift to other platforms. “One of the unintended consequences could be that teens migrate to other, less policed platforms," he said. You could already notice the same trend in the younger generation who are trying to escape the governance on social media platforms such as Snapchat, Tik Tok and so forth, where the entire audience is young.
He stated that this could result in even more dire consequences.
"Teens could and would find different platforms all the time making it difficult for the tech companies parents and regulatory authorities,’” he said. “These hotter rather than cooler platforms might have little controls which might lead to more dangers for the adolescents.”
Misha told me that teenagers would be rebellious and look for the boundaries, finding ways to bypass them or in other words, “hack the system.”
Zoltan stated that parents should be on the lookout for “red flags” , the instance of problematic internet use in their teens. “It’s probably worth exploring if kids feel like they have to leave Instagram because they want to do things parents shouldn’t know about, which means they are going to something that they don’t want parents to be involved in," he said.
“Anyway, even though some may migrate to other platforms, this should trigger further discussions on how parents manage children’s access to the Internet, not only that one site. All restrictions should come as part of the bigger picture that such concerns are not just temporary measures on concerns regarding only Instagram.”
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