Last week, the federal government took their most significant step in the history of the internet towards protecting children on social media. In a public forum, the Senate Judiciary Committee wailed against the CEOs of Meta, TikTok, X, and other social media giants about their unwillingness (at worst) or inability (at best) to do what is in their power to protect children from the terrors of social media.
Over the last few decades, the world has seen all the bad that social media can produce. From bullying to exploitation to addiction and much, much worse, social media has an undeniable negative affect on society, and children and adolescents in particular. And while it is true that parents hold the keys to a lot of the prevention, social media companies are absolutely to blame for the damage they have done.
Every once in a while, an industry faces a crossroads. Something absolutely terrible happens, and the government sees no option other than to step in and attempt to fix it. Despite where we find ourselves in Washington today, government is generally willing to allow industry to police itself until it proves it no longer can. Look at the Banking Act of 1935 that followed the Great Depression, or the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) following 9/11. Despite what some may have you believe, the government does not want to regulate. But when an industry as a whole fails to regulate itself, government steps in, often going very far in the other direction.
Today, we see that social media will soon be entering this illustrious group of industries that cannot be trusted to govern themselves. Within a year, you will see heavy regulations pass on social media companies which, though determined to not let regulations rule over them, came up well short of proving that they are capable of protecting their users. And although you cannot point to a single incident that occurred where a mass group of children were negatively impacted during a specific period of time, the incredible build-up over time has come to a boiling point.
Industry has to be able to police itself if they do not want the government to get involved. Though they have been in the news for the past several years, Hollywood has actually moved to get better with their own self-policing. Sports are generally left alone by government agencies. However, ticket sales to patrons in both of these arenas have not been very good at consumer protections, and now the government has gotten involved. It will always depend on how the industry sets up protections when creating new products and ideas.
The next industry to test these boundaries will undoubtedly be artificial intelligence. In the last year, we have seen the tremendous step forward that AI has taken and how it has begun to dominate our lives. How many pictures do you see online that you have to wonder about how they were generated? How do you even know if an email you received was written by a human? Your own image can potentially be faked to make you look like you were doing something that you absolutely were not doing.
Now, to the credit of the industry, they have already begun to self-regulate. Try asking an image generator to produce a picture of a celebrity, politician, or athlete doing anything. Most platforms will not allow that to be created. But as this industry grows, they will be expected to continue to ensure that consumers are protected, because if they are not, we could be in for a disaster - and so could they.
Izzo Zwiren is the former host of the Jewish Living Podcast. Izzo is a fan of trivia, stand-up comedy, and the New York Giants. Izzo lives on Long Island with his wife and three adorable, hilarious children.
