Social media giants Meta and TikTok grilled by Gosport MP about addictive features targeting children

Top officials employed by social media were took to task by an MP over whether their platforms are harmful to children.

Gosport politician Dame Caroline Dinenage, Conservative, questioned directors at Meta - parent company of Facebook and Instagram - and Tiktok. The culture, media, and sport committee is holding an inquiry into how children’s TV and video content is provided and whether kids have access to high-quality British-made programming.

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A ground-breaking legal case from the USA in March found that Meta had intentionally built addictive features into its apps and caused mental health harms to a user. TikTok had reached a settlement out of court hours before jury election was due to begin in the case.

Dame Caroline asked Rebecca Stimson, Meta’s UK Director of Public Policy, why in documents used in the case Meta staff had called Instagram “a drug”. She also asked Giles Derrington, Senior Government Relations Manager of TikTok, why the company was uniquely blamed for damaging crazes such as school wars, the skull-breaker challenge, and the blackout challenge.

Both witnesses were grilled over whether there were children under-13 using their platforms, despite the platforms operating an “over-13s only” policy, and the failure of platform’s to enforce bans. TikTok said that it did not recognise Internet Matters figures that suggested 32 per cent 9-12 year olds still use TikTok. Meta said “if we can’t better improve the accuracy of finding out how old people are, it’s difficult to make [online safety laws] work.”

Speaking about the session, Dame Caroline said: “We all want to be sure that what our children are watching is good for them, whether it be educational or entertaining. With increasing evidence that social media is not a healthy environment for children, we want to understand possible solutions to diverting kids’ attention towards content that is good for them. We know that children aren’t consuming video content in the ways that we did when we were younger, but they still deserve the same quality content that we got.”