Maeve Catherine

As humans one of our biggest strength and weakness is our emotions. They leave us vulnerable but they also connect us to each other.

Through Netflix’s documentary, The Social Dilemma, the public was put into the loop on the worries tech CEOs, presidents, and developers have about the technology they make money from. As I wrote my white paper it was interesting, yet frightening, the number of tech experts that have come forward expressing the concerns they have about the youth having access to the technology.

Infinite scrolling is one of the more discussed issues I have discovered through researching the impacts media has on developing brains. One thing Instagram did well for a short while was telling the user when they were all caught up on their feed. This feature allowed me to know I will see an increased amount of advertisements and algorithmic content if I continued scrolling. Though I understand that these decrease the time spent on an application however I do wonder what age group should have an scrolling limitation. I was raised with time limits on my digital devices, and though I disagreed with my parents at the time I do believe it has helped me gain a sense of self control.

If the age minimum on platforms is 13 years old I believe there should be a scrolling restriction put in place, by the developers, for users 15 and younger. At 16 years old, many can begin legally working for minimum wage and driving so it would be important to have other boundaries stay in place. For example the limited scrolling would disabled however the in app purchases and shopping advertisements would need to remain disabled.

Large amounts of unnecessary data from young users should not be extracted from those under 18 years of age. Despite the fact that we all hit agree to the terms and conditions presented, the government still considers these users as children or teenagers. It is known their brains are not fully developed so it they are unable to fully protect themselves and make their own minds up about the world around them without on overwhelming amount of propaganda flooding their social media feeds.

As AI technology grows and improves it will be important to teach the proper ways of protecting oneself from over exposure.