The debate over children’s use of social media and the circulation of content that exploits the image of minors has gained enormous repercussion in recent days following the complaints made by influencer Felca Bress. For experts interviewed by Agência Brasil, it is necessary to establish clear rules for social media and platforms to combat the online exploitation of children and adolescents.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced that he will send to the National Congress, this Wednesday (13), a proposal for the regulation of social media.
According to experts, to generate profit, social media encourages people to expose their own lives more and more, without taking responsibility for the risks or even the crimes committed in virtual environments. Therefore, it is necessary to have laws and mechanisms that regulate the actions of technology companies.
“Social media platforms need to have limits on what can be commercially exploited. Exploiting adultized, sexualized, exposed childhood without any care is not, anywhere, acceptable as a business model,” argues psychologist and digital education specialist at Instituto Alana, Rodrigo Nejm.
“We cannot allow children to be used as a commercial product,” he adds.
Influencer Felca has exposed profiles with millions of followers on social media that share images of minors under 18 wearing little clothing, dancing to sensual music, or talking about sex in programs promoted on digital platforms. The influencer also shows how the platforms themselves, through algorithms, encourage the dissemination of this content.
Nejm emphasizes that by boosting this type of content, platforms make it reach more people and open up financial gain opportunities for those who post it. In this way, the engagement logic ends up leading families and the children themselves to expose themselves more and more in search of likes, comments, and shares.
“There is a constant invitation to expose this type of behavior, and the more outlandish, the more eroticized, the more shocking the content is, the more attraction it gains on these networks and, therefore, the more money it generates for those who expose it and for the companies,” he explains.
Regulation
For Débora Salles, general research coordinator at Netlab, a research lab at the School of Communication at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), regulating platforms is necessary not only to protect children and adolescents, but the entire population, which is vulnerable to crimes on social media.
“Regulation helps ensure that platforms will be held accountable and will act. They have the technical capacity to moderate this type of content, either automatically or semi-automatically. Nowadays, since they are not required to, they do very little,” she says.
Bill
In light of the repercussion of the issue, the College of Leaders of the Chamber of Deputies decided, this Tuesday (12), that a working group (GT) will be created starting next week, with the aim of drafting a bill (PL) to combat the adultization of children and adolescents on social media. The group will have up to 30 days to present a text on the topic.
One of the texts suggested as a basis for the new bill is PL 2.628 of 2022, authored by Senator Alessandro Vieira (MDB-SE). The bill requires companies to create mechanisms to prevent content involving the eroticization of children, for example. The text provides for fines for platforms of up to 10% of the company’s revenue in case of non-compliance with the legislation.
Nejm highlights the approval of PL 2.628/2022 as an important mechanism to regulate and hold platforms accountable. He emphasizes that not even families have the right to profit from the image of children and adolescents. “Not even families have that right, because the Statute of the Child and Adolescent prohibits it, nor do technology companies have the right to do so. Today it is already considered a violation, and we need more regulation. That’s why the bill is important,” he says.
This Tuesday (12), the Brazilian Society of Pediatrics requested urgency from the Chamber of Deputies for the approval of the bill. The text has already passed the Senate.
Adultization
According to research by the Regional Center for Studies on the Development of the Information Society (Cetic.br), 93% of the Brazilian population aged 9 to 17 are internet users, representing 24.5 million people. The TIC Kids Online survey also shows that 83% of these adolescents have their own profiles on social media.
Additionally, 30% reported contact with someone online they did not know personally.
Without moderation, children and adolescents have access to all types of content on these platforms and are exposed to abuse and exploitation.
The “adultization,” denounced by Felca, is the premature exposure of children to behaviors, responsibilities, and expectations that should be reserved for adults. “Adultization is a phenomenon related to exposing children to situations that in some way threaten childhood. It is often understood as the issue of eroticization and sexualization, but not only that. We can also list child influencers who give investment tips in cryptocurrency, for example, or do some kind of work that somehow distances these minors from what childhood should be,” Débora emphasizes.
In this engagement logic, children have access, from a very early age, to unattainable aesthetic and social standards. They begin to compare themselves and feel frustrated for not meeting the expectations built in these environments. This can generate psychological and physical impacts, in addition to exposing them to criminals.
“The way we interpret the world is built from the beginning of our lives. We develop concepts about ourselves, others, and the world from the interaction of genetic, cultural, environmental, physical, family, developmental, and personality aspects,” explains psychologist Tiago Giacometti.
In childhood, while they should be experimenting and discovering more about their own personality, children and adolescents are being subjected to real online tribunals. “This can impact the development of that adult, as well as their quality of life and experience in social environments, often impacting other people,” Giacometti adds.
Pedophilia networks
Another risk of exposing children and adolescents on social media, whether through their own posts or those made by family members, is that these images and videos may be used by criminals. In addition to regulating platforms, experts recommend that families double down on caution regarding both what is accessed and what is published.
Débora emphasizes that social media is not a safe environment. “What we often see are families, parents, mothers who end up producing content, sometimes unintentionally with these children, which is reinterpreted by pedophilia networks. So, images are used, for example, of children changing diapers, children swimming, children playing, and this ends up entering a black hole of crime,” says the general research coordinator at Netlab.
“Parents have no idea that they are putting their children and relatives at risk, because they imagine that it is a safe environment. But it is important to reinforce that, nowadays, social media is not a safe place,” she says.
Débora recommends that children and adolescents not use social media or even the internet without parental monitoring.
“Children need close and attentive supervision of what they are doing on social media, because they end up as victims not only of pedophilia, but sometimes involved in networks of misogyny, extremism, and other crimes. It is important for parents to understand that just as you don’t leave a child alone in a square to do whatever they want, on social media it is also important to keep an eye on what a child is doing.”
Source: Agência Brasil