Social media are a mixed blessing. They allow us to communicate with our loved ones from afar — and allow creeps and trolls to push their ignorant bile into places where they’re unwelcome. They allow wise voices and rational discourse to reach more people — and provide the same privilege for voices that belong to unhinged extremists. In short, they have increased access to information, misinformation and disinformation, indiscriminately.

They have also generated billions of dollars in profits — and turned each of us into a commodity, with businesses buying and selling our attention.

If only we could limit social media to recipes and photographs of cute cats. But it’s much too late for that. Pandora’s Box has been opened and its contents spilled across our culture, where it can help or harm us — and our children.

Facebook is preparing a version of its Instagram platform for children under 13. With a focus on images rather than dialogue, this may seem benign. But a coalition of 44 attorneys general — a bipartisan group that includes North Carolina’s Josh Stein — is asking Facebook to halt its plans.

“Launching a version of Instagram for young children is a terrible idea,” Stein said last week. “Facebook’s inability to stop the spread of disinformation, protect people’s personal information and stop abuse provides no confidence that the company would be able to protect our young people online. I am particularly concerned about the impact even more social media at a younger age could have on our children’s emotional well-being.”

In a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the group listed its main reasons for concern. They include research showing that social media can be harmful to the physical, emotional and mental well-being of children; the cyberbullying already present on Instagram, which has been experienced by 42% of young Instagram users; and the use of Instagram by predators to target children. In 2020 alone, Facebook and Instagram reported 20 million child sexual abuse images.

And most important, children lack the maturity to navigate these complexities. They’re too inexperienced to understand that some of the people they encounter online have bad intentions.

Of course, many children have been using the internet to communicate with friends since before they could even spell properly. Their use increased during the pandemic, when they couldn’t meet friends in person.

But image-sharing platforms are different from texting platforms. They have more potential to affect children’s self-esteem and mental health.

And Facebook doesn’t seem particularly trustworthy. “Facebook’s priority isn’t protecting children; they’re a for-profit company looking to monetize time spent,” Titania Jordan, the chief parenting officer at online-monitoring company Bark, told The Washington Post.

Facebook is also facing competition from platforms like YouTube, owned by Google, which already has a version for children under 13. It won’t want to just leave that money on the table.

Sadly, 40% of children under the age of 13 already use Instagram, according to a report from Thorn, an international anti-human trafficking organization, and 45% use Facebook daily, without any parental controls or protections.

But that’s no excuse for letting the situation worsen.

Of course, the responsibility for children’s well-being ultimately falls on the shoulders of parents. They need to know what their children are doing online — and not just by having a one-time conversation. Monitoring and adjusting accordingly should be a continuous project.

But even with the best lines of communications — and proper parental supervision — children sometimes have a way of bypassing parental controls. We appreciate Stein’s position and hope he and his associates prevail.

We don’t think it’s old-fashioned to suggest that parents might justifiably keep their children off social media platforms until they’re old enough to handle their complexities. For that matter, some parents could use a little more time offline, too.

— Winston-Salem Journal