Internal chats show how social media companies discussed teen engagement

Recently released documents show the significant business opportunity social media companies saw in recruiting teenagers to their platforms and how they discussed the risks that intense digital interaction could pose.

The documents were released last week as part of a slew of lawsuits brought by school districts, state attorneys general and others against Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube, alleging that the design of their products harmed young users. The Tech Oversight Project, which advocates for more regulation on technology platforms to protect teens online, has compiled a a report On newly released documents, which have been previously independently reviewed Edge. A federal judge is scheduled to hear arguments on Monday that will determine the scope of the trials, the first of which begin in June.

Internal documents produced as part of the lawsuit show that social media companies recognized the business value in creating users at an early age. But it also shows how companies tracked the harmful effects features could have on those users and thought about ways to address those risks. All of the companies have expressed a commitment to protecting teens on their platforms and have generally complained that the evidence presented by plaintiffs lacks relevant context. Meta, for example, Launched a web page Responds to common questions about litigation and lists research describing other factors that affect adolescent mental health, or Find the minimum correlation Between adolescents’ use of digital platforms and their mental well-being.

Some emails and slides show how important some companies see teen users to grow their business. “Mark (Zuckerberg) has decided that the company’s top priority in the first half of 2017 is teens,” a redacted sender said in a message. Email To Meta’s then-CEO of Growth, Jay Rosen, with the subject line “FYI: Teen Growth!!” At the end of 2016. He later discussed A Teen Ambassador Program for Instagram It looked to formalize teens’ penchant for creating Finstas by offering Facebook a private mode based on what teens liked about creating alternative accounts on Instagram: “smaller audiences, plausible deniability, and private accounts.”

“Solving children’s problems is a huge opportunity,” Title A November 2020 slide From Google, citing that “kids under the age of 13 are the fastest growing online audience in the world.” Its internal research has found that family users “lead to better retention and increased overall value.” The company admitted this Encourage students to use Chromebooks In school making them more likely to consider purchasing Google products in the future. Google spokesman Jack Malone said Edge In a previous statement that “YouTube does not market directly to schools and we have responded to meet the strong demand from educators for high-quality, curriculum-aligned content.”

Some companies have discussed the PR risks involved in having young users on their platforms. Emails from 2016 displays Meta discusses public perception and safety risks around its launch It didn’t last long Lifestage app for under 21s. Staff weighed the potential risks of giving principals at high schools where they planned to trigger an alert, against the possibility of ruining the app’s “cool factor” by prompting them to do so. One raised concerns about how difficult it would be to know if an app is only for real teens. “(We) can’t enforce sanctions against impersonation/predators/journalism if we don’t have a way to verify accounts.” In a February 2018 documentMeta realized that it might have to delay allowing teens onto Facebook due to “increasing scrutiny about whether Facebook is good for young people.”

A 2018 Google-produced promotion titled “Digital Wellness Overview – Autoplay on YouTube” notes that “technology addiction and Google’s role have been in the news and gaining prominence since the start of the ‘Time Well’ movement.” It said autoplay could “disrupt sleep patterns” and suggested that limiting it at night might help (Autoplay is now Discontinued for children under 18 years of age).

The companies were aware of research and anecdotes describing children using their platforms under the age they should, or sometimes shouldn’t. A 2017 study Commissioned by Snap, it found that 64 percent of users ages 13 to 21 use it for school. In a Highly revised chat history From February 2020 Reproduced from TikTok logs, one person in the chat said they were “kind of happy” that news crews ended up not being able to make it to a public event as the students on the panel they were watching were “primarily under 13” and discussing “how they know they’re not supposed to have an account.”

But the documents also show ways in which the companies looked at the unique challenges younger users might face on their platforms and discussed how to mitigate them. A March 2023 slide deck Snap describes a recent study it worked on to “understand the perceptions of users, parents, and health experts about social media in order to identify new opportunities to enhance positive interactions and perceptions of Snapchat.” After finding several teens who reported being on social media “all the time,” the company suggested considering allowing users to turn off social media during school hours, or setting their own time limits in the app. “From the beginning, Snap has thought about how time, content and online interactions impact real-life relationships,” Snap spokeswoman Monique Bellamy said in a statement. “We intentionally designed Snapchat to create a unique experience that encourages self-expression, visual communication, and real, real-time conversations, rather than promoting endless passive consumption.”

Document 2021 TikTok recognized that compulsive use of its platform was “rampant,” but said that meant it needed to provide users with “better tools to understand their usage, manage it effectively, and ensure time on TikTok is well spent.” The company thought it was a good thing that TikTok users were more engaged with their app compared to other platforms, because “research suggests that negative social media use is more harmful.” TikTok did not immediately provide a comment on the latest version of the document.

In the 2016 email to Meta’s Rosen, the revised sender wrote that the goal was to emphasize “teen connections: teens” and wanted to find a way for “teens who are newly joining Facebook to indicate whether or not the person they are befriending is a peer (aka another teen).” They also added that Meta is “investing heavily in improving our ability to model the actual age of teens.”

Some guarantees may actually be beneficial to companies, executives sometimes suggest. Google, V 2019 documentIt suggested discouraging “growth that does not support wellbeing”, while recognizing that investing in users’ digital wellbeing would be positive for its brand and a “more sustainable path to growth”.