by Larry Magid
This post first appeared in the Mercury News
As regular readers know, I’ve been working in the online safety field for decades. For much of that time, it was common for young people to push back when adults criticized their use of social media, arguing that the benefits outweighed manageable risks and that grown-ups should keep their hands off their tech. But that may be starting to change. In conversations with ConnectSafely’s Youth Advisory Council and at recent events, I’m hearing growing skepticism from young people about social media and other big tech products.
I’m not saying it’s a groundswell, but it feels a bit like the beginning of a movement. Last week, I attended an event sponsored by California Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, who represents parts of the East Bay, titled “From Aware to Empowered: Navigating the Online World as Women & Girls.” Two of the speakers, Sneha Revanur, a Stanford student and founder and CEO of Encode AI, and Nikki Iyer, a UC Berkeley student and co-chair of Design It For Us, spoke about efforts to rein in Big Tech and give young people more say over the technologies shaping their lives.
Last Friday, I attended a “social media demonstration” at UC Berkeley, sponsored by Project Reboot and other groups, where students with signs and banners listened to music and played outdoor games to send the message to social media companies that “we have had enough of the exploitation of a generation.” It was much sparser, and more fun, than the demonstrations I attended when I was at Berkeley in the late 1960s, but there was a common theme when it came to pushing back against big corporations and other institutions. Back then, it was the military-industrial complex and corporate establishment. Now, for some young people, it’s Big Tech.
Sign at Berkeley event
Tech’s transformation from ‘good intentions’
In an interview, organizer Johnny Vasquez said the event was “not asking people to abolish technology. Social media, devices, laptops, phones can all be very useful, as long as we use them appropriately and don’t let them distract us or take us off task. We’re promoting healthy habits.”
Vasquez made another observation that rings true to me: “I think many of these platforms started with good intentions. But a turning point came with design features like infinite scroll and intermittent variable reward systems that keep people engaged longer than they consciously intend. It used to be you caught up on your feed and left. Now it can feel like a bottomless pit.”
What he was describing is the transformation from the early days of social media, when sites such as Friendster, Bebo, MySpace and Facebook were largely forums where people communicated with real-life friends or like-minded people they met online.
I was actively involved in social networking at the time, not only as a user but in partnership with MySpace, Facebook and other companies that were early sponsors of ConnectSafely. Although MySpace had serious design issues, it was often portrayed as far more dangerous than the evidence warranted. When Facebook opened to high school students in 2005, it was a breath of fresh air, centered on real identity, friend connections and school-based networks.
At the time, there were no algorithms designed to feed you content meant to titillate, provoke or keep your attention. And the people you heard from were usually friends or friends of friends, not professional influencers with agendas ranging from making money to manipulating public opinion.
At that event held by Assemblymember Bauer-Kahan, Stanford student Iyer said, “The more time I, as a kid, spend on Instagram, the more data Instagram can collect on me. With that data, Instagram can run targeted ads to me. This creates a loop of profit for Instagram. What it creates for me is a loop of doom scrolling, poor mental health outcomes, and attention fragmentation.” She said that she was nine when she got her first phone. “My parents were separating at that time, so it made sense for me to have a phone to keep in touch with both parents. That was the utility. But then around 11 or 12, I started downloading Instagram, Snapchat, and Musical.ly (now TikTok). And that’s when the phone started to lose its value. Those apps are so distracting.”
Reforms, not bans
At both events, young people called for reforms such as tweaking algorithms that encourage divisiveness, giving users more control over feeds and recommendations, reducing systems that reward outrage, body comparison or addictive scrolling, strengthening privacy protections, and taking stronger action against harassment, deepfakes, impersonation and sexual exploitation.
But I didn’t hear anyone call for either governments or parents to take technologies away from young people.
As Berkeley student Revanur put it at Assemblymember Bauer-Kahan’s event, “When parents try to be extremely punitive, … it really just incentivizes sneaky behavior. When there’s a will, there’s a way.”
And in Australia, where a social media ban for teens under 16 went into effect in December 2025, early evidence suggests many under-16s are finding ways around the restrictions. Some experts warn such bans may push young people into less visible, less regulated spaces, a risk Australia’s online safety regulator itself has acknowledged.
Progress
Bauer-Kahan, who has been a staunch advocate for regulating tech companies, said that she has seen some progress. “The exciting thing is that the companies are starting to respond before we’ve even passed a law.” She said that Gemini, which is in every one of our classrooms through Google Classroom right now, just came out last week with an announcement that they’re removing the features that make it feel like a person.”
Over the past year, Meta has expanded Instagram Teen Accounts with stronger privacy and content protections, tightened limits on potentially harmful content, and added parental supervision tools, including visibility into teens’ Meta AI topics and alerts related to self-harm. There is still no foolproof way to know whether someone is lying about their age, but Meta is using AI to look for signals that a user may be under 18 and place those accounts into teen safety settings.
Although these are steps in the right direction, there are still fundamental problems that safety advocates and, increasingly, young users say must be addressed, including algorithms designed to maximize engagement by amplifying divisive or emotionally charged content, encouraging prolonged use through features like infinite scroll and constant notifications, and not doing enough to combat unhealthy comparison and compulsive use.
There is a lot more than can and should be done, but, in the meantime, ConnectSafely has resources to help parents guide their children and teens in the use of these apps, including taking advantage of blocking, reporting, parental supervision tools and other safety feature