US Multi-State Settlement with Meta

Statement from Children’s Media Foundation on US Judgement and Multi-State Settlement Fine to Case Claiming Meta Harms Children  

The Children’s Media Foundation welcomes yesterday’s US court judgement, which is part of a growing body of evidence exposing the harm being done to young people by Big Tech’s media platforms, and the failure of those businesses to provide children with consistently positive, life-enhancing media experiences.

But handing out fines after the event is not the solution and the CMF supports this excellent assessment given by Siobhán MacDermott, founder and CEO of TeenAegis; “A real win for kids would require independent safety testing before major products and design changes reach them; meaningful data access for researchers and regulators; public disclosure of known risks; an enforceable duty of care; and penalties large enough to make prevention more profitable than concealment.”

Crucially, the crisis in children’s media experiences is not confined to Meta. Yesterday, YouTube’s Pedro Pina in his McTaggart lecture was enthusiastic about the future of television in the UK, seeing a lasting partnership between the broadcasters and YouTube. This takes – as usual – no account of the Children’s audience and industry. Revenues are 90% lower on Made for Kids content on YouTube, offering minimum viable business options for creators or producers. This imbalance leaves the broadcasters or producers funding content while YouTube captures the young audience and does nothing to redress the imbalance in ad revenue.

The £3m YouTube has offered for training is a nice gesture. But in the kids’ sector this is just training to join an industry with a broken financial model that is struggling to pay creators a living wage.

Greg Childs, Director of the Children’s Media Foundation said, “We welcome YouTube’s offer of collaboration with the traditional TV industry – broadcasters and producers – bringing them closer to the maker/creator community. But this is worthless unless YouTube also addresses the funding of children’s content. Without sustainable funding for production, our children are doomed to a cycle of viewing dominated by cheap, high volume, fast-turnaround and increasingly AI-generated content. YouTube’s algorithmic recommendation system is a double failure. It’s set up to reward attention when it should reward the value of the content to the young person watching. It’s crazy. The algorithm prioritises audience attention to serve the ad market, but then advertising revenue is depressed because of the way YouTube is forced to sell ads around children’s content to comply with data protection laws. It’s a classic Catch22. A lose/lose for kids, and for the people who want to make quality content for them.”