Latest / Best of Business / Stephen Scheeler: Former Facebook CEO for Australia and New Zealand on whether parental controls are the way forward for social media

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Stephen Scheeler: Former Facebook CEO for Australia and New Zealand on whether parental controls are the way forward for social media · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talks, it'd be
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  Speaker 2: Missa's global head of safety Rickins, we should consider other
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  Speaker 2: options instead of doing the same as Australia and banning
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  Speaker 2: under sixteen year olds from social media and Tigany Davis
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  Speaker 2: is in the country in New Zealand for a safety conference.
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  Speaker 2: She was on the my co hosting Breakfast this morning.
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  Speaker 3: If you put parental approval, so anytime you download an app,
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  Speaker 3: a team goes to download an app, a parent has
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  Speaker 3: to say yes or no. In other words, you're starting
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  Speaker 3: with a restriction around entering and you're basically saying Okay,
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  Speaker 3: yes you can do this or no you can't. That's
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  Speaker 3: a better way to do that across the entire Internet.
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  Speaker 2: Stephen Sheila is the former CEO of Facebook Australia and
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  Speaker 2: New Zealand and he's with US High Stephen.
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  Speaker 4: Good afternoon.
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  Speaker 2: Do you agree with her that parental controls are preferable.
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  Speaker 5: I think parental controls at the at the app store
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  Speaker 5: level would be another good safety feature that should be
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  Speaker 5: It should be considered and the platforms have been saying
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  Speaker 5: that for a while their belief is it's you know,
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  Speaker 5: it's too hard to do this in the app itself.
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  Speaker 5: You should push it back to the app stores, which
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  Speaker 5: are controlled by Apple and Google, and have them kind
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  Speaker 5: of you know, making sure the parents are certifying whether
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  Speaker 5: an app, any app, winds up on a kid's phone.
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  Speaker 5: But as you can imagine, that's that's part of a
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  Speaker 5: solution at making social media and the Internet more safe.
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  Speaker 5: But it doesn't you know, it doesn't solve the problem
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  Speaker 5: of well, okay, what happens when that individual that team
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  Speaker 5: gets on to social media. You still want to have
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  Speaker 5: that side of the equations safe as well. So I
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  Speaker 5: don't think it's a total solution, but I think it
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  Speaker 5: is another tool in the toolkit.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, it seems to me.
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  Speaker 4: Yep.
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  Speaker 2: The parental controls are a great idea, don't they already?
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  Speaker 2: They do already exist. I'm not imagining the say.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely.
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  Speaker 5: Anybody who's listening who's got kids and you are trying
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  Speaker 5: to see what your kids are doing on social media.
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  Speaker 5: You've all been in, many of us have been in
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  Speaker 5: and fiddled with the controls. The problem is at that level,
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  Speaker 5: it's confusing, right, your kids around six or seven different
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  Speaker 5: social media apps, the controls are usually set to your
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  Speaker 5: default on, not default off, so you have to go
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  Speaker 5: and turn things off. It's hard to figure out, and
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  Speaker 5: then you've got to your kids can go and get
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  Speaker 5: around you and change it back, and so at least
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  Speaker 5: a lot on parents they have to try to figure out.
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  Speaker 4: And most many of us aren't tech experts in the
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  Speaker 4: first place.
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  Speaker 5: So it does exist, but it's still probably is too
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  Speaker 5: difficult for.
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  Speaker 4: Parents to make sense of and really use in a.
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  Speaker 2: Practical Okay, so tell me if I'm wrong here. It
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  Speaker 2: seems to me that these things are useful, but as
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  Speaker 2: you say, they already exist and we don't use them.
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  Speaker 2: The default is actually that people don't use them. The
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  Speaker 2: benefit of a social media ban, as opposed to this,
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  Speaker 2: is that it creates the default setting of no, you're
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  Speaker 2: not allowed to unleash your parent decides to break the rules,
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  Speaker 2: and that actually gives parents a lot of power that
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  Speaker 2: is really quite helpful to parents. Is that fair.
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  Speaker 5: I think that's a good way of thinking about it.
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  Speaker 5: In fact, it is this dea what's the default? And
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  Speaker 5: I think what what Meta is arguing is the default
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  Speaker 5: should be at the parents should have the control at
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  Speaker 5: the point of downloading an app from the app store,
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  Speaker 5: and that's where the parents should say yes or no,
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  Speaker 5: rather than having the government say no. But I think
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  Speaker 5: you can argue, you know, reasonable people can disagree as
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  Speaker 5: to where that point should be. But I think it
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  Speaker 5: is all about giving parents more control and making it
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  Speaker 5: simpler for parents to be able to handle, you know,
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  Speaker 5: the fire hose of stuff that's coming at them from
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  Speaker 5: social media.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, so we are what it's coming up. Actually, a
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  Speaker 2: couple of months since the Australians banned the kids from
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  Speaker 2: getting on the social media is would you would you
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  Speaker 2: describe it as a success?
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  Speaker 5: Look, I've seen you'll we have to be careful, right,
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  Speaker 5: it's early days. Yeah, it takes time to change human behavior.
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  Speaker 5: And this is you know, you've got a whole literally
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  Speaker 5: millions of kids suddenly having something taken away from them.
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  Speaker 5: Those kids are trying to get around it now, right,
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  Speaker 5: that's a lot of what's happening, and it will take
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  Speaker 5: time for this to become the new normal. And so
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  Speaker 5: I think really the judge success or failure, you've got
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  Speaker 5: to look for a year or two into the cycle
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  Speaker 5: to see where it lands.
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  Speaker 4: So that's far.
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  Speaker 5: It's really hard to see. I think both sides are
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  Speaker 5: all sides here. I think there's more than just two sides.
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  Speaker 5: There's parents and kids as well. They all have opinions,
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  Speaker 5: and there's bits of data. But I think it's too
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  Speaker 5: early to say.
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  Speaker 2: I haven't seen any compliance data data, which I think
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  Speaker 2: is probably a key to it. Have you seen any of.
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  Speaker 1: It out yet?
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  Speaker 5: I haven't seen. No, I haven't seen any, So I
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  Speaker 5: wait for that. I'm still I think we still have
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  Speaker 5: to wait for better data to be able to assess this.
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  Speaker 2: And Stephen one final question. The fact that we've got
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  Speaker 2: Antigony Davis going around the world making the case for
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  Speaker 2: anything other than a band suggests to me that Meta
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  Speaker 2: is reasonably worried about this idea catching on. What do
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  Speaker 2: you think, Well.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think they are worried, and look, it's good.
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  Speaker 5: I don't know antike any Personally, I think it's good
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  Speaker 5: to see Meta have people out in the market. I
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  Speaker 5: haven't seen that a lot, to be honest with you,
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  Speaker 5: that they're out, They've got people out there talking to
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  Speaker 5: the media more actively. I think personally, I think it
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  Speaker 5: was a mistake that they didn't do that, but they
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  Speaker 5: tried to lobby government. They made pronouncements, but they really
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  Speaker 5: didn't have the face of the company out there talking.
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  Speaker 5: And I thought she made you know, she made some
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  Speaker 5: good points and made some good case but I think
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  Speaker 5: it is showing that yes, there's naturally they're going to
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  Speaker 5: be worried. They're worried that a big chunk of their
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  Speaker 5: business is going to be restricted, and indeed it already
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  Speaker 5: has been in Australia, and you know, this just puts
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  Speaker 5: more sand in the wheels of them trying to run
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  Speaker 5: their business.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, hey, thank you very much. Steven has always appreciated
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  Speaker 2: talking to you. Stephen she Loave a form of Facebook.
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  Speaker 2: Australia New Zealand.
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