Facebook has
announced the cancellation of its Instagram Kids initiative. This comes after
accusations that the social media giant commissioned – and kept hidden –
internal study that discovered Instagram was harmful to young people's mental
health.
The study's
results, not to mention the fact that they were concealed, have only fueled the
project's initial backlash. "Instagram for kids," one early headline
said, "the social networking site no one asked for."
In the field
of information technology development, who has asked for what is an intriguing
question. In the late 1980s, studies revealed that the history of computers was
arguably one of increasing demand rather than responding to necessity. And
social media is no exception: it has evolved from being the thing we didn't
realise we needed to becoming ingrained in everything we do. It can also be a
source of danger, according to research.
Children are
at the centre of this conflict between utility and safety. They are the future
creators of our technology, inheriting our blunders, but they are also
utilising it right now. And they are the future clients of technology
corporations. Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri has been quick to defend the relevance
and significance of a children's edition of the app. But can we trust big tech
to provide us with what we truly require rather than manipulate us into
consuming what they need to sell?
The
emergence of usability
The notion
of user experience has now taken over information technology thought. However,
the first home computers were far from helpful or useable for the common
individual. This was largely due to the fact that they were still meant for
skilled specialists: they expected competency in whoever turned them on.
Parents were
urged to embrace the educational possibilities of home computers beginning in
the early 1980s. They considered the devices as beneficial to their children's
education and future employability. However, early gadget adoption was more
conceptual than practical.
From the
user experience to the user's safety
Of course,
technology has changed the way we live, communicate, engage, and work.
Households are loaded with useable, useful, and being utilised devices and
applications. Indeed, keeping devices and everything contained inside them in
use is key to IT design: the user is a customer, and the technology is built to
foster – even solicit – that habit.
User
experience design is the process of determining how to deliver a meaningful and
relevant experience for someone utilising a digital product or service, ranging
from gadgets to social media platforms. Tech titans talk about satisfying our
expectations before we even know what they are. And the data designers collect
on us — and our children – is how they know what we want before we do.
A rush of
recent cases, however, illustrate the threshold in terms of user injury that
such profit-driven digital innovation influenced by our personal data has
crossed. These include the complaint brought against TikTok by Anne Longfield,
the former Children's Commissioner for England.
Longfield's
lawsuit claims that the video-sharing site collects personal information from
its underage users for targeted advertising reasons, including date of birth,
email address, phone number, geographical data, religious or political
convictions, and browsing history.
The current
issue is that privacy is under threat because profits trump safety.
The
usability movement, which began in the late 1980s, must now give way to what
computer scientists call usable security: human-centric design, where safety
comes first. According to our findings, many web applications are unfit for
usage. They are unable to strike a balance between usefulness and security (and
privacy).
We need to
look at the possibility of open-source designs — those that are not motivated
by profit – as alternatives. And we must instil ethical consciousness in young
minds: they are the programmers of the future. Understanding the ethical
consequences of what is being programmed is just as vital as learning to code.
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