World Social Networks Day: AI, digital education and families facing the challenge of protecting minors

The use and presence of minors on social networks represents a complex open debate today, with countries opting to regulate these platforms and even prohibit minors’ access to this type of services, as is the case of Australia and the United Kingdom.

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However, Funditec Research believes that adopting this position of prohibition against social networks does not stop the underlying problem, leaving open the possibility that minors “find shortcuts to reach them” and causing parents to “have the false feeling that someone is taking care of the problem.”

On the occasion of World Social Media Day, which is celebrated every June 30, the organization has put on the table how the use of AI tools, digital education and family support can serve as support to detect risks and provide protection to minors on these platforms, instead of betting on a ban.

As the director of Funditec Research and expert in AI and cybersecurity, Gonzalo Álvarez Marañón, expressed in a statement, prohibiting is “the easiest answer to a complex problem, which should make us distrustful.”

Instead, the expert has clarified that promoting other long-term strategies is more useful, as is the case of digital literacy. That is, teaching minors how algorithms work, what platforms do with their data and how to identify situations of manipulation. This perspective “produces more resilient citizens than any access ban,” he added.

Following this line, Álvarez Marañón has also pointed out the essential function of parents when it comes to social networks, which is just as necessary as learning because “no law replaces the conversation between parents and children,” as he has valued.

In this case, the manager has assured that minors who develop with clear technology references provided by adults turn out to be “more resilient” than those who are only “under legal protection”, because the minor really does not understand what happened and learns to “avoid”.

AI as a support tool, despite its risks

Along with all this, Álvarez Marañón has also pointed out the use of AI-powered tools as a support option to detect possible risks on social networks and, at the same time, provide protection to minors.

In this sense, he has indicated that AI can be used to “detect patterns of harassment, explicit content or risky behavior quite effectively” on social networks. One such example is Meta, which uses advanced AI systems to proactively enforce its content standards and identify the most serious and illegal content on its platforms. In addition to these AI tools, they are also being applied in parental supervision services, as Funditec has recalled.

Despite being a very useful technology, it must be taken into account that, sometimes, it also acts as part of the problem, for example, promoting false content distributed on social networks and generated with AI such as ‘deepfakes’.

Furthermore, Álvarez Marañón has also pointed out that AI tools can also become “generalized surveillance if the person operating them is not the family but the State.”

Therefore, as a cybersecurity specialist, the director of Funditec Research has advocated “regulating the design of platforms without building identification infrastructures that put the privacy of all citizens at risk,” given that the surveillance of minors should not imply that of all people.

Thus, he recalled his previous experience in European R&D projects and made reference to proposals from the European Union such as the EUDI Wallet, a digital identification wallet that will reach all European citizens this year, designed to “demonstrate legal age without revealing name, date of birth or ID.”

Designed to trap users

On the other hand, Funditec has also emphasized the design of the social networks themselves, which is designed to trap users without them realizing it, especially the profiles of minors.

This point of view is supported by the latest report ‘Impact of Technology on Children and Adolescence’, prepared by Unicef, which indicates that around 9 percent of minors globally between 10 and 20 years old spend more than five hours a day on social networks.

Álvarez Marañón has explained that this is due, in part, to the fact that the adolescent brain is in full development, especially the part dedicated to regulating impulse and evaluating risks. Therefore, social networks take advantage of this situation and design their systems being aware of this neurological vulnerability.

This is achieved through some main threats such as addictive design, exposure to harmful and unfiltered content and “bullying among colleagues amplified by public visibility”, as the expert has assessed.

“The infinite scroll, notifications, variable reward systems and algorithms that prioritize content that provoke intense emotions are the result of deliberate design and not technological accidents,” Marañón stated in this regard.

Furthermore, although it is a less visible threat, the director of Funditec Research has also highlighted the commercial exploitation of minors’ data by social networks and platforms, a practice that begins from the moment the user’s account in question is opened.

As a result, Álvarez Marañón recalled that social media platforms control issues such as the emotions inferred by the pause time before each content, social relationships, location and “behavioral patterns that reveal more than a secret diary.”

“The problem is not the technology itself but the business model of the large platforms that convert child care into a commodity,” stated the director of Funditec Research.