← Sunday Sports Club with Allison Kuch
Sunday Sports Club with Allison Kuch
Raising Kids in a Digital World with Meta's Allison Hartnett
00:21:49
Loading summary
Transcript41 lines
- [00:00]
A
The following podcast is a Dear Media Production. What's up guys? Welcome back to Sunday Sports Club Podcast, a podcast all about sports told by a woman. And that woman is me. Hi guys, I'm your host, Allison Cooch. And today I want to welcome my guest, another Allison. She is the Meta's director of Product management for Youth and Social Impact. Now I have to say I, I'm really excited to talk to you, but I'm really early on in this because my daughter's only two, but I do already feel this pressure of like, how do I protect my child without totally freaking out? So before we get into all the tools, can you tell us what led you into youth and social impact work at Meta?
- [00:43]
B
Yeah, yeah. I mean, for me it really centers and I'm also a mom and my kids are not actually teens yet. They're not users of our products yet. I have a 10 year old boy and a 7 year old girl and so I'm a little further along in the journey and they're definitely using technology. But yeah, for me it's, I, I was always really interested. I've been working in tech and media for a long time. I worked at Meta for almost nine years prior to working on youth. I actually worked led our creators product for Instagram. So really fun to be talking to you from a creator's perspective also. And I've just, I've always been, prior to that I worked in media. I've always been really interested in like what the, the, what new media can mean and how much more freedom it gives people and it gives so much opportunity to people. But I also, you know, because of my experience with creators, I've also seen the really hard parts about social media. Creators experience a lot of the hard parts of social media. And so when the opportunity came at Meta to focus on youth and make sure that we are delivering the best experience for youth, it really, you know, allowed me to bring together like my personal life. Being a mom, I took, I started the youth job when I had an 8 year old and I was like, all right, I have five years before my kids are using our products and I will like, I want to make sure that I feel really, really good and then also bringing together my creator's experience on our products. Yeah, that's what really brought me to it.
- [02:16]
A
Yeah, totally. I mean, I'm sure having that like, personal aspect also like helps you in your current role. Before Meta, what parts of your career helped shape how you think about kids, teens and technology today? And like, how are they intertwined Yeah, I haven't.
- [02:34]
B
So I think rather than my career, it's really my personal experience that brought me to kids and technology. Prior to working at Meta, I worked at LinkedIn. Not a huge focus on teens, though. There are some teens now who are very, who are very up on LinkedIn. But my. Yeah, they're. They're very go getters. But my personal experience is like, I was a teen who grew up on the Internet. I'm a core millennial who had. I think I had a live journal. I don't know if you have ever heard of that platform. I had a live journal. I was really. I was an early AIM user, AOL Instant Messenger. I had a Facebook account in the first year that Facebook ever existed. And I have always had a huge amount of fun experimenting with technology and that's what led me into my career. But also like it was the wild west, particularly back when I was first experimenting with everything. So it's like I just love thinking about these issues and how we can make things better. And so having the opportunity to do that in my day job has been really, really meaningful.
- [03:39]
A
Absolutely. So basically what you're saying is like, it hasn't like you. Safety online hasn't ever been like this abstract thing that you needed to understand, has always been very personal.
- [03:48]
B
Yeah, absolutely. It's some. I mean, it's something that like I've experienced. Everyone in my life who's a parent or just a person on the Internet is thinking about this all the time. Not abstract at all to me. Yeah. And particularly as my kids now, they're not using Meta products because our products are, you know, really for teenagers plus. But they are using YouTube. They're super interested in video games, in particular the older boy. And so I'm now really like experiencing myself. How do you set the right limits and guardrails on your kids and technology?
- [04:22]
A
I think a lot of parents feel stuck between the two extremes like social media, super dangerous versus the this is just the world. Now from where you sit, how do you wish. What do you wish parents understood better?
- [04:36]
B
Yeah, I think, I mean, I think that what I wish parents understood, there's many things. First is that I don't think that like either of those extremes is true. There's social media is a experience that you need to shape and you have a lot of tools to shape it. And that's what we're trying to make more and more possible with launches like teen accounts, which I'm happy to talk about in more detail than the. I think that like, as A parent and as a person thinking through our products, and most of the people building our products are parents. What I want parents to know is, like, they. We want to put them in control, and we want them to take control of their child's experience. Every family and every kid is different on what they need. So we want to make sure that parents have tools and insights as well. As teens are in really safe defaults to make sure that they're having a positive experience.
- [05:30]
A
Totally. For parents of toddlers or, like, really young kids, are there anything that we can do now to set a healthy foundation before the teen years even start?
- [05:41]
B
Yeah, this. Okay. So this. I've been thinking about it for myself. I love to know, like, have you talk also about, like, what is your experience? For myself, what I'm trying to do is, like, notice how different technology and media experiences are affecting my kids. So sometimes that's really. That can be really challenging, because often if you're, like, letting your kid watch TV or have time on an iPad, it's because you need to make dinner or you were busy. But I think it's been really. In my experience, it's been really worth it to be, like, make sure I understand what my kids are watching, talk to them about it after, see, and notice, like, certain things will put them in a weird mood that I don't want to repeat. I had to, for example, eliminate SpongeBob square faces SpongeBob in my house, because that would cause a lot of chaos after they watched it. Or there was a time where my son was into a particular video game, and I just saw that it was taking him way too much of his energy. And then I needed to reset. Like, we don't play that game anymore. And being able to just really notice where kids are. And I think that I hope that that will translate to when my kids are older as well, that they'll understand. Like, my expectation is that I know what they're doing on their technology. Like, we're gonna talk about it, and we're really gonna focus on, like, how does it affect them. And me knowing about it means then that I can, like, take control and put in limits when I need to. Okay.
- [07:09]
A
Yeah, that's really insightful. Cause I think even for myself, like, whenever we travel, like, I definitely need to utilize, like, a little screen time here and there. But I think even just taking note of, like, her behavior or, like, how she's reacting to certain shows, I think that's really insightful.
- [07:24]
B
Yeah.
- [07:25]
A
You mentioned a little bit earlier about teen accounts, so I Do want to talk about like, Instagram team teen accounts? Because this feels like something parents actually need at a very basic level. What changes for a teen when they're in a teen account?
- [07:40]
B
Yeah, yeah. So overall, the way you should think about teen accounts is it's a couple of different layers of protections. With the first concept being we want to make sure that teens are in safe defaults no matter what. So without their parents taking any action, because it's not, you know, it's hard for parents to like, keep track and change everything. We want to make sure the default experience for teens is as safe as possible. So we really formed what are the safety settings and teen accounts based on the concerns that parents have brought to us. And we have done a ton of research and talking to parents. And there's really three areas that parents are most concerned about. The first is contact. Are strangers contacting, you know, or people inappropriately contacting kids? The second is content. What content are teams seeing on our platforms? And then the third is the overall amount of time spent. So the default settings that we have that every teen gets are teens are defaulted into being private accounts to really address the contact issue. Teens can't be contacted by users that they don't follow on content we have implemented and we, you know, teens see different content than adults. There's different rules. Like if you're in your reels feed, we want, we've taken inspiration from movie ratings and also direct conversations. A ton of research with parents on what content is appropriate or not appropriate for teens. And we only deliver that kind of content. And then on time spent, we have parent controls that allow parents to set time limits at night. You could also, you can move it around to have it be during the day as well, but parents can have know different controls over time limits. So that's the basic experience that teens get now with teen accounts.
- [09:31]
A
When it comes to a teen account, you mentioned that the content they're being fed might be a little bit different and that it's inspired by 13 moving rating movie ratings criteria. So what would a teen see less of in terms of content?
- [09:44]
B
Yeah, yeah. It's across a number of categories. Very similar to, like how movies are different, but, you know, a big one is how much sexual content or nudity, violence, risky stunts, you know, dangerous things, swearing, those kind of things, you know, very like things you'll be familiar with from, like, we did take a lot of inspiration from the movie industry because they really have, you know, thought about this over time. And we talk directly to parents on These kind of categories.
- [10:15]
A
I never. Because when it comes to social media, it's almost like you're allowing them into like this other world. Right. And I never want my kids to feel like they have to be sneaky or secretive. So how do these protections work without making teens feel like they're being watched all the time?
- [10:29]
B
Yeah. So when we're designing these protections, we are, I would say we're thinking about two things. First is we want them to be balanced. Like we want to always have balance between what a parent needs and what a teen needs. And so, you know, that's the way we think about that kind of thing is we, for example, you know, for example, we have a feature where parents can see who is messaging their child, but they can't see the actual messages. And we think that's the right kind of balance that allows a parent to start a conversation with their teen about who are you talking to? Like what, what's going on with that friend? But not, you know, get so into their privacy. And then the second thing we have thought about, to make it so teens don't have to, you know, aren't feeling like they have to sneak around. It's just the default that is unchangeable for if you're under 16. So when you're in teen accounts, you all the features like your private by default, you can't change it unless if you're under 16, unless you get a parent permission. And we think the fact that like that's true for everyone, that's just the setting is really powerful in making, you know, teens, they can't sneak around it. That's just how it is.
- [11:40]
A
Something I can appreciate is the idea that every family has different rules. So can you explain the limited content setting and who it's really meant for?
- [11:49]
B
Yeah, yeah. So when, when we were looking at our new content experience to make sure we were rolling out age appropriate content, we, if you think about some families are really comfortable with their kids going to see a PG13 movie when they're 13. But some families aren't like that. You know, families are different. So we wanted families be able to also choose a different experience on Instagram if they were more comfortable with even less of some topics that they might consider sensitive. So the default that teens are in is a experience that is 13 plus. But a family can also choose a limited and even more limited content setting where they'll get even less of those kind of content that I had talked about. Yeah. And so that's an option for everyone.
- [12:42]
A
And I know you mentioned this maybe earlier on in the podcast, but I want to hit on this too. Let's say a parent notices that their teen is scrolling late at night or like during school hours. What kind of control does a parent realistically have?
- [12:55]
B
Yeah, in. In. So ultimately I really like this is not in my, as an Instagram product, person's control. I think the biggest control is a parent can take the phone out of the bedroom. I sleep with my phone out of my bedroom and it is life changing. But you know, since we we can't offer that ability within Instag, there is this. We have settings that allow parents to set blocks on the app at night if they want to.
- [13:20]
A
And for parents who maybe aren't super tech savvy, what's the easiest way to get started without feeling intimidated?
- [13:27]
B
Yeah, I mean I think that, you know, so in your account you can go into settings and find supervision. We also have a bunch of resources to like add a simple Google, Google Teen accounts, Instagram teen accounts. And we have resources to help you walk through the whole process. It's on us to make sure that the supervision experience is as easy as possible. If you can use Instagram, I think that you can set up supervision. Like we've tried to make it as simple as our app. Yeah, it's just there in your settings for you.
- [13:59]
A
Okay. And something that's very like talked about right now is AI, AI and online protection. So AI is everywhere right now. How is Meta actually using AI to protect teens instead of just talking about it?
- [14:14]
B
Yeah, I mean I'm thinking about AI all the time and teens and really in two different ways. There's teens using AI, but then there's my team using AI as a technology that helps us keep kids safe. So I'm happy to talk about either or both of those. But to talk about how we're using AI to keep kids safe, there's two main ways that I'm most excited about. The first is on content. So in order to make sure that a teen only sees age appropriate content, we have to be able to identify what is this content, like what is in this reel in a really efficient and real time way. And AI, we're using AI to identify like what is in content really effectively. It's just like a really big technological advance. So we're really excited about that. Additionally, we're using AI to identify who is a team to make sure that teens are getting into these default experiences. So we use AI to look at like every aspect of. Some teens will not report their real age to us it might be not a surprise. So we make sure to look at who are they connected to, what are they posting and we can estimate what we think people's ages are. And then we default them into the right experiences. And AI is improving both of those things for us.
- [15:36]
A
So AI, for example, could kind of make your kid feel more independent without really realizing it.
- [15:43]
B
I. Yeah, I mean, I think that's possible. Yeah.
- [15:47]
A
And then I want to jump into Carver Carver conversations. So can you explain the idea behind the conversation series?
- [16:00]
B
Yeah, we. We have. I think, well, your daughter is young enough that you probably haven't experienced this yet. But we. The Conversations series comes out of the concept that like when you have a somewhat older kid, it can be really hard for them to have a serious convers with you when you're looking eye to eye. And a bunch of good conversations come out when you're in a car together. Don't have to make eye contact. I have heard my kids are not allowed to sit in the front seat even yet. So I think I have an even more powerful version of this. But like my kids will love to just like have a long conversation in the car that they would never have face to face. And I hear that that is also true of teens, even if they're sitting beside you. So with that inspiration, we. Carversations is a series where parents are having conversations with their teens in the car about how they're using social media and serious topics like that. So we've had a couple so far. Most recent one was with Tom Brady and his son. Probably a. Hopefully someone near and dear to you. I don't know how do you feel about Tom Brady? But we're really excited about their conversation. What.
- [17:08]
A
Why did that conversation kind of stand out with Tom Brady?
- [17:14]
B
I mean, I think it's. I always find what I find like really interesting of someone. Like, so my husband is a Pats fan, so Tom Brady is a very famous person in my house and I mean he's famous everywhere but he's really been an icon for many, many years for us. And there's a difference for sure, there's a difference. What stands out is like he's a normal dad. Like, you know, to me that's what stands out. Love to hear your reaction to it. But like everyone, no matter what is going on with them professionally, like is dealing with these issues with their kids. Yeah, I think that's really powerful.
- [17:47]
A
Yeah. Being in a sports household, I think a lot about visibility with teens watching athletes on and off the field from your Perspective. Why does it matter that athletes show up in these conversations about online behavior too?
- [18:00]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think we want, like, we want to normalize people talk about this and having folks that, like, people really look up to, you know, across industries and athletes are something that are. Are something particularly boys can really look up to. And we want to make sure there's a conversation with boys, not just girls. I think that, like, athletes are amazing for that.
- [18:27]
A
And then in terms of advice for parents looking forward, what's one mindset shift you'd encourage for parents who. Kids who maybe aren't teens yet.
- [18:39]
B
I mean, let's see. In addition to. I do. I really. And this is the group of people I'm in. I really do think this, like, how am I preparing for my kid to be more independent with technology can start through your kid's whole life. And it does center in. You are noticing how your kid responds to technology and you're talking to them actively about what your expectations are going to be and what your dialogue is going to be like if they're. Now, I think, like we have the potential for. I think I'm doing this with my kids, like, for years to talk to them about how does this media make you feel? Do you want to spend more or less time on it? That and like we can really have. Or like, who are you talking to on technology? I definitely talk with video games. It's actually the first place that I think a lot of kids like social video games is where they experience that kind of thing. I think you can like, start the habit formation really early of what feels good, what doesn't feel good. Yeah. And have that conversation through their whole lives.
- [19:47]
A
And that kind of leads me into my last question. What gives you hope when you think about kids growing up online?
- [19:54]
B
I mean, I think that. I think it's the comp. Like the, the. The presence of the conversation that we're having now. We have all learned a lot. Both like parent. I'm saying that as a parent, but also as a person responsible for building these products. We have learned so much and we're. It's just so much more of a conversation than it was five or 10 years ago. And that I think that's going to lead us to the right places. Like we have teen accounts is something that came out of having those conversations with parents and with teens. We are seeing that teens are. Who are in teen accounts. They're staying in the default settings, which means, like, they're finding that valuable. We're seeing that teens and teen accounts really are having safer experiences online, seeing, you know, more appropriate content, not having an appropriate contact. Like we're seeing the real impact of it. Yeah. And we're really excited about that.
- [20:52]
A
I love that. And then for any parents listening that maybe want to learn more, where can they, like, I don't know, get some more information? Where can the people find you on social media? All of that good stuff.
- [21:04]
B
Where I would encourage people to go to is familycenter.me has all of the information you need about teen accounts and how to set it up. Yeah. Any other questions you have?
- [21:19]
A
Thank you so much. I feel like it's never too early, even with a baby who's unborn and a daughter turning three in a few months. Thank you so much for everything, and I hope you guys enjoyed listening to today's episode of Sunday Sports Club. Be sure to tune in every Sunday wherever you get your podcasts. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.