Justine Toh
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The Albanese government wants younger Australian teens off social media. It announced today that it will introduce legislation to force tech companies to implement age verification on their platforms. The minimum age is TBC.
No complaints here. Puberty is hard enough without feeling the pressure to perform online 24/7 and often on platforms with a track record of weaponising girls’ insecurities against them, as Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen revealed in 2021.
But on Haugen’s recent Australian visit, she called age verification a “bumper sticker” solution since it didn’t do anything to address social media’s algorithmic harms. Among teens, these include spiralling mental health issues, social isolation, and even the potential for radicalisation, in which I include pro-eating disorder content, and extremist masculinity promoted by the likes of Andrew Tate.
Amy Crouch is the 20-something-year-old daughter of cultural critic Andy Crouch, who gave CPX’s 2022 Richard Johnson Lecture on our addictive relationship with our devices. I recently heard that Amy only uses algorithm-free platforms. (Honestly, I didn’t realise such options even existed).
The Amy option – or, exiting the social media mainstream altogether – won’t work for most. But the lengths to which she feels the need to go to safeguard her wellbeing is a sign that something is seriously amiss.
The algorithm feels weirdly godlike in the worst possible sense: inevitable, inescapable, and immensely powerful since it shapes our reality. It’s watching our every online move, too, and selling on our data. We’re at its mercy.
If we’re going to put any gods on trial or “in the dock” – to borrow a title from a C.S. Lewis book – my vote is that we start with the algorithmic gods. Better yet, their creators and enablers: the tech overlords of Silicon Valley who must subject their product to government regulation and scrutiny.
