Social media: How algorithms hook children into harmful thinking - and 5 ways parents can help them be safer

• Social media platforms and other sites and apps will soon need to make key changes to keep children safer online
• Currently, many algorithms use triggering content to keep users engaged
• But a psychologist warns this can lead to young people being bombarded by potentially harmful content
• She fears new rules for tech companies may not be enough to stop the wider issue
• But no matter their child’s age or stage, there are things parents can do to help them become a safer social media user

Social media algorithms are reeling children into dangerous patterns - and a psychologist fears new changes may not be enough to cut the line.

Ofcom, the Government’s communications regulator, recently finalised more than 40 new child safety measures, which websites and apps will have to introduce by July under the Online Safety Act. They’re largely aimed at creating “safer social media feeds” for young users, with platforms required to carry out more robust age checks, and configure their algorithms to stop harmful content being recommended to children.

We caught up with Dr Elly Hanson, a clinical psychologist and researcher who focuses on online harm and abuse, and one of the leaders of childhood and tech thinktank Fully Human. Dr Hanson told us about the pernicious nature of many social media algorithms - and why the new rules might not be enough to rein them in.

She also offered up some tips for parents wanting to help their child navigate the often-messy online world, and keep them safe on social media. Here’s what she had to say:

Social media algorithms ‘hooking into children’s insecurities’

Dr Hanson said that many social media platforms are driven by engagement-based algorithms, designed to keep people online for as long as possible, “using whatever means they can”.

“What we find is that they are doing that through triggering these emotions within us, such as maybe shock and horror, anger and outrage, sexual arousal, sometimes a feeling of superiority and entitlement,” she said. “These algorithms are highly addictive.”

Their tendency to prey on base instincts could also put people at odds with their own values and intentions. “We find that we're doing things online on social media that… we don't really want to be doing, and it may be leading us away from being our best selves. The social media platforms are shaping people towards their corporate profit, and often away from their own best interests in the process.”

This came with a whole set of potential harms, she continued, especially for children. “Young people are being bombarded by content that might be, for example, making boys suspicious of girls and women, or some kind of very sexual objectifying content, content that makes them feel bad about themselves, that might be encouraging self-harm or eating disorders, or makes them kind of focus on their appearance. It's often finding and hooking into their insecurities - and then really amplifying those.”

Of course, social media and being online in general weren’t entirely without benefit for young people either. “Online there can be gaming. Some gaming can be great fun and positive and very social… There's the chance online to message with your friends, to develop budding romances, to search up stuff that interests you.

“It's a way to be really informed about life and the world,” she added. “There are all of these positives. But the problem is that on social media, young people are swimming through the sea, with all of these currents pulling them to content that might be quite negative.”

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Is enough being done to protect them from harmful content?

Recent research by Vodafone, which surveyed over a thousand 11-14 year old boys, found that within ten minutes of being online one in four had seen negative content about girls and women. “That's likely to be an underestimate, because a lot of the negative content about girls and women they're not computing is negative content,” Dr Hanson added.

Within that same timeframe, a quarter had seen sexual content. A third had seen violence, while a fifth had seen content that made them feel bad about themselves. She was hopeful that Ofcom’s new online safety changes would start to make a difference. But at the same time, she was cautious they won’t go far enough - because a lot of the focus was on stopping extreme content, rather than dealing with the flaws in the algorithm as a whole.

“We could potentially end up in a kind of whack-a-mole situation where the algorithm is [still] pushing content that's negative and quite pernicious, and when it crosses quite an extreme boundary, we then whack it down and ban it,” she said.

“To give you an example, there's a lot of content on social media which fits with this ‘gold digger’ meme. Boys and young men are seeing these little videos that show a man trying to chat up a girl. She's not very interested. Then she discovers that he's got a Lamborghini and suddenly she's all over him,” she continued. “In and of itself, that video, you couldn't say that's hate speech, that's misogynistic.

“But when it's part of a pattern that boys are regularly seeing, telling them that you can't trust girls, they're just out to use and exploit you, then we have a problem.”

Five ways to help your child become a safer social media user

1. Delay smartphones - and link up with other parents wanting to do the same

Dr Hanson said that the emerging, parent-led ‘delay smartphones’ movement was a really positive thing. “I think it's more or less impossible when you are alone as a parent to withhold a smartphone from your child, when everybody else at age eleven or twelve is getting one.

“But if you come together as a parent group and say, look, we want to delay our set of children having smartphones then there's that power in numbers,” she added. “I think that just pushes the age back and gives children more of their childhood.”

2. Model healthy tech practices yourself

“Sometimes we as adults are very clear on [saying] children shouldn't do this or that, but then we're doing it ourselves,” Dr Hanson said.

She recommended having meal times completely free of screens, or switching off your phone at a set time in the evening. “Making sure that when you are with your children, you are actually with your children present, rather than distracted on and off your phone.”

3. Start talking about social media early on

Discussing how social media works with your children “little and often” from a young age can be really beneficial. “There's a window before children really hit the core teen years where they can become quite resistant to your views as a parent, so you want to be talking to them in primary school, early secondary school about the algorithms.”

Dr Hanson also recommended that parents don’t hold back. “This might sound quite complex, but it doesn't have to be. The basic point being the way that they are designed is to try and addict you, to try and show you stuff that triggers you and keeps you online for longer.

“That's often not the stuff that is really aligned with what is good for you or what’s true,” she added. They’ll still need to be protected when they do finally venture online, but these discussions mean that children are alert to the manipulation at play - “and can develop a little bit of resilience to that”.

4. Explore helpful resources together

Dr Hanson said parents could try watching Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma with their child. “[It] is a really well put together documentary, really delineating what's going on here, that's very compelling for both adults and children to watch.”

She also suggested checking out Vodafone’s digital parenting hub, which has plenty of resources and articles which offer further support.

5. Redirect the conversation

For teens and older children who already use social media, there’s no real way of putting the genie back in the bottle - and some may already be struggling with harmful views from the type of content they’re seeing. “It is difficult because these messages can be quite persuasive, and if you go in head on saying that they're a whole load of rubbish, then you may not get very far,” she said.

What can sometimes work better is pivoting the conversation to encourage them to think more critically about what they’re seeing - and why. “There is a space for the head on challenge of misogyny. Absolutely. But pair that with discussion about what are the motives at play here. It's not necessarily just about sharing facts and truth, it's about trying to trigger you. There is a kind of primal thing within the human psyche… if we're told to be suspicious of another group and to think of ourselves as in-group, out-group, we're quite vulnerable to that. There's a lot of content on social media that hooks into that psychology.

If your child is coming out with negative views about another group, she says parents should really listening to what they're saying, and grapple with it. “There may be some things within their wider set of views that you can agree on. Finding those points of agreement [can be a] foundation to then look at the bits where there might be a difference of view.”

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