Why in News?

• Lawmakers, child rights activists and medical experts are raising the alarm against Instagram’s plan to launch a service targeted at children, stating risks to their physical, mental and emotional wellbeing.

About the move

• Facebook-owned Instagram is said to be working on a separate app for children under 13.
• Several advocacy groups and lawmakers censured Facebook by highlighting how children’s privacy could get jeopardised by the move.
• A group of U.S. lawmakers urged Facebook not to create an Instagram service for children as it could potentially harm their physical and mental well-being.

How Social Media Utilise our Data?

• Status, group names and icons, frequency and duration of activities, and whether a user is online information will all continue to be held by WhatsApp.
• Beyond this, the platform will collect data from the new payment feature, including processing method, transactions and shipment data. It will also collect and share location, device model, operating system, battery level and browser details.
• The updated WhatsApp terms will help Facebook and connected third-party apps to exploit user data for commercial gain, including personal data, breaching user’s privacy
• The personal data could also result in the micro-targeting of propaganda and hate messages through Facebook.
• The privacy policy lacks clarity and fails to shed light on how data from Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram is being combined, and who it is being made available to.

Issues with social media

• Concepts in technology such as data mining, technology addiction, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and surveillance capitalism can be misused and can pose serious threats to privacy.
• Social media has many beneficial qualities; it includes the facilitation of interpersonal connection across long distances, acquiring knowledge, and even finding organ donors.
• But, user data can be used to build models to predict user actions and how companies keep user attention to maximize the profit from advertisements.
• Manipulation techniques are used by social media companies to addict their users and the psychology that is leveraged to achieve this end. This often leads to increased depression and increased suicide rates among teens and young adults.
• User actions on online platforms are watched, tracked, measured, monitored, and recorded. Companies then mine this human-generated capital to increase engagement, growth, and advertising revenue.
• “Disinformation-for-profit business model” companies make more money by allowing unregulated messages to reach anyone for the best price. Ex: flow of fake news regarding COVID-19 and propaganda that can be used to influence political campaigns.
• Almost 75% of cyber crimes, including child sexual abuse, terrorist radicalization, financial crime, and law and order disruption through fake news, begin with a phishing or social engineering attack via these messaging applications or social media.

How Social Media Affects Humans?

• Increase in hospitalizations for teenagers due to self-harm, beginning in 2010-2011. This spike is due to the great amount of time spent on social media because people have the tendency to check social media as often as they can and the psychological effects it has on the brain. If a user is feeling distressed, the media can release dopamine into the brain, and they eventually find themselves dependent upon it. The release of dopamine makes technology work similar to addictive drugs, such as alcohol or nicotine.
• An increased use of social media, particularly Instagram, can harm adolescents and exploit young users’ fear of ‘missing out’. Facebook’s relentless focus on appearance, self-presentation, and branding presents challenges to adolescents’ privacy and wellbeing.
• There is a phenomenon of patients wanting to receive plastic surgery in order to look more similar to a picture with a filter on it due to ‘Snapchat Dysmorphia’. This can lead to a body dysmorphic disorder and the lowering of one’s self-esteem.
• The practice of using positive intermittent reinforcement in media development to keep users’ attention for longer periods of time.
• Young children are not equipped to handle the range of challenges that come with having a Social media account.
• People are highly likely to believe false information on the Internet, such as conspiracy theories, affecting off-screen behaviour and lives. False information on Twitter spreads six times faster than true information, according to a study, because people have a greater emotional reaction towards fake news.
• 64% of the people in extremist groups on Facebook joined these groups because their algorithms lead them there. Algorithms push content that ignites outrage, hate, and amplifies biases within the data that is shown to them.
• Children’s data could also be used to build profiles to advertise and promote products. Facebook uses personal data of users aged 13 to 18 to create profiles with harmful or risky interests, including smoking, gambling, alcohol, extreme weight loss, and adult magazines, according to a study by Australian advocacy group Reset Australia.

Major Laws/Judgments on Privacy

In European Union

• The European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)- It reflects a paradigm shift in the understanding of the relationship individuals have with their personal data, granting the citizen substantial rights in his/her interaction with data controllers (those who determine why and how data is collected such as a government or private news website), and data processors (those who process the data on behalf of controllers, such as an Indian IT firm to which an E.U. firm has outsourced its data analytics).

In India

• Puttaswamy judgement (2017) puts the right to privacy is a fundamental right
• The Information TechnologyAct (2000-  Section 43A and Section 72A,- a right to compensation for improper disclosure of personal information.
• The Personal Data Protection Bill
• AP Shah committee-Nine Principles of Data Privacy
• The Aadhar act – Section 13- makes the processing of personal data without a person’s consent possible for any function of the Parliament or State Legislature.

Reference:

1. https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/internet/why-instagram-for-kids-is-being-criticised-by-lawmakers-and-child-rights-groups/article34602876.ece