Nearly a hundred civil society entities yesterday asked the future government to force the social media industry to submit its algorithms and “dark patterns” to “audits”, in order to protect children and adolescents from addiction to technology, early access to pornography or digital forms of violence.
In this sense, the director of programs of the ANAR Foundation, Benjamín Ballesteros, reported that in 2010 his organization dealt with a total of 131 cases of suicidal ideas and attempts in children and adolescents and, last year, 4,554 of those of which 1,275 presented the “autolytic attempt already started”. “In other words, if they had not talked to us, they would not be alive,” he explained.
In 51.5% of these cases, technology was implicit and related to autolytic ideas and attempts. Ballesteros warned of the “romanticizing effect” of suicide on social networks, in some cases with its promotion or justification as a possible solution to certain problems by influencers, and exemplified it with the number of videos that can be found on YouTube with a simple self harm search
This is one of the measures of the proposal for a State pact to protect minors from the digital environment, which was presented yesterday at the Ateneo de Madrid by its promoter, the European Association for Digital Transition, and the signatory organizations Save The Children, Fundación ANAR, iCMedia, Dale Una Vuelta and Unicef, to which 75 other civil society entities have joined.
The vice-president of the European Association for the Digital Transition, Ana Caballero, warned during the event of the “complex income models” behind the applications that children and young people use at ever younger ages.
According to the data managed by the entity, the arrival of the first mobile phone for personal use in Spain is around 10.96 years old, 90.8% of adolescents connect every or almost every day and 98% are registered. on some social network.
These “dark patterns” and “persuasive designs”, whose operation is completely opaque and which often go unnoticed by the human eye, aim to ensure that the user spends as much time as possible online and do not take into account “neuroplasticity”. ” of early age users and how this affects the well-being of the child, Caballero said yesterday.
The NGOs advocate that the companies that provide this service be “transparent” and explain the “algorithmic logic” that they apply to their products to end the feeling of impunity, in which it seems that the algorithm is blamed for everything but that it ” It doesn’t belong to anyone.”
Other issues addressed were premature access to pornography and addiction to this content, the clinical director of the Dale Una Vuelta association, Alejandro Villena, reporting adverse effects: self-esteem problems, promotion of gender stereotypes, decrease in care and capacity for planning and normalizing violence against women.
The director of social and political incidence of Save The Children, Catalina Perazzo, agreed on the seriousness of this problem, since according to her organization 30% of young people have pornography as their only source of affective-sexual education. “They themselves tell me ‘I know that this is violence, but I can’t help it, what I’m seeing makes me sick,'” the specialist reproduced.
