"Big Tech" Is In The Hot Seat Over Kids Safety Online. Here's What Parents Need To Know.

After analyzing 5.6 billion messages on its platform, Bark Technologies knows the how unsafe social media was for kids last year.

In its most recent annual report, the Atlanta-based software company dove into the problematic content and people online that kids are exposed to across social, video, and messaging apps that have been detected and alerted via its AI platform. The stats are a stark reminder. Kids are exposed to threatening and problematic content on a daily basis. Some of the key findings of the reporting include:

• 76% of teens experienced cyberbullying in 2023
• 38% of teens expressed signs of poor mental health online
• 10% of teens received a message from a predator
• 21% of teens showed signs of disordered eating
• 36% of teens showed signs of anxiety

Titania Jordan CMO/CPO Bark, co-author “Parenting in a Tech World,”  said there are some positive signs coming out of the report. Nearly every issue that Bark alerts parents for – including cyberbullying, suicidal ideation, exposure to graphic sexual content, and links to predators online – decreased. The one glaring exception: Disordered eating.

“That isn’t surprising to me, but it is disheartening,” Jordan told Hypepotamus. She believes that is due to the glamorized versions of life shown across different social media platforms.

The report also highlighted the fact that the online threat landscape is constantly shifting. While parents may be familiar with apps like Snapchat, Tumblr, and Instagram, kids are communicating on more and more apps than ever before. Specifically, Kik and Steam have grown in popularity and are common places where kids experience bullying and severe violence.

“These should be on every parent’s radar,” Jordan told Hypepotamus.

Big Tech’s Role In Online Safety

Increasingly, people are asking big tech platforms what they are doing to keep kids safe online.

Some platforms have started to address the issue. Instagram said it was in support of federal legislation that gives parents more supervision power over what apps their kids download. But more regulations could be on the horizon. In late January, several families were at Congress to testify about Sammy’s Law. That bill would force these companies to offer third-party safety monitoring on their platforms.

For Jordan, Sammy’s Law is a positive move forward.

“[Social media companies’] interests are misaligned. They've generated over $11 billion in revenue off of children over the past year. They're not going to work very hard to keep children off of their platform,” she told Hypepotamus. “So Sammy's law would make it so that parents would have the ability to opt in to third party parental control applications, like Bark and others. That way they can get alert when drug dealers are contacting their children, when their children are being bullied, or when their children are expressing suicidal ideation. So that that law alone gives me hope.”