00:04:41.500Mine are a little bit older than yours, so we're past the bath bomb stage, although you are a far more thoughtful and better parent than I am.
00:04:50.020I never delved into the bath bombs or glitter or any of that stuff.
00:04:55.840You just do it when you're desperate, okay?
00:06:09.200Yeah, it's hard. It's a big job. I mean, when you think about it, I say this all the time. This is a show about social media, which is something I never thought I would be doing. It's like I went to school for this, but things keep coming up. And as a reporter, I keep investigating them.
00:06:24.740I think social media is changing our world more than almost anything else right now in so many
00:06:32.260ways. Economics, how we parent, how kids want to be parented, and not to mention psychologically
00:06:39.440and everything. So what you're doing in figuring out how children will manage all of this,
00:06:46.440it's got to be a weighty topic for you, especially as a mom of tween kids.
00:06:51.100Yeah, I think it is. I mean, going back to your original question about how parenting is different now as compared to when we were kids growing up, I think there are a lot of the same themes that are there. I just think it's a unique time and it's not just social media.
00:07:07.680I look at all of the stressors and factors that are impacting youth and kids, not just teens, but younger kids, too.
00:07:16.840And it's, you know, everything ranging from economic instability, like you said, to a shortage of mental health specialists in schools, you know, public schools.
00:07:27.740You know, there are so many I think you've talked about this in some of your prior episodes, but, you know, the pressure to be perfect and academic pressure and kids are talking about getting into college earlier and earlier and, you know, what jobs they're going to do.
00:07:43.260So I think it's just it's a different time than when we were kids.
00:07:48.160But I think parenting in and of itself is hard and it's complicated.
00:18:24.680somebody says, you know, if they claim that they're over the age of 18 and we start seeing
00:18:31.360signals of friends posting on their page, you know, happy 14th birthday, that's a signal to us
00:18:38.880that they're lying about their age. We also, if we pick up on those signals that people are lying
00:18:44.760about their age and claiming that they're over 18, but they're actually under 18, we at that point
00:18:49.900checkpoint them and we give them different options because we know that not everybody
00:18:54.560may have an id depending on remember we're a global company so not everybody's going to have
00:18:58.560a driver's license at 16 but we offer you the option of either providing some form of
00:19:04.500identification which we check or you can use our selfie um we have a selfie tool through yodi it's
00:19:12.660like a face based age prediction tool and it's really cool and other companies do it too but
00:19:17.860Basically, you take a selfie from different angles.
00:19:19.960Yeah, I take a selfie from different angles.
00:19:21.600If you're lying about your age, we will force you.
00:19:25.040We will compel you, Joe, to check with an ID or with a face selfie.
00:19:31.340But the point is, there are a lot of different things that we do on the back end to ensure
00:19:36.820that teens are getting age-appropriate experiences.
00:19:39.660The problem, though, that we're seeing, and this is another, I don't want to veer off
00:19:43.720topic here, but it's not just us who are facing these issues.
00:19:47.260It's across all of industry. And right now we don't really have great solutions to not just dealing with it on our app, but dealing it across all of the apps where these issues are coming up. So we are pushing for legislation to address this issue. So that's another topic.
00:20:04.720But the other point you made about, you know, foster care and parents is that not every teen comes from a family where they live with their bio parent.
00:20:15.420And so when we talk about parent supervision or parents, we're actually talking about a person's guardian.
00:20:22.220So it's not a misnomer because we have a lot of parents who are overseeing their teen's experiences, but it might be a guardian.
00:20:30.200But the idea is you have to be over the age of 18.
00:20:33.380And we have a number of restrictions in place and signals to ensure that the person who is supervising the teen is actually a guardian, if not a parent.
00:20:45.400But what if there is no one supervising?
00:20:48.820So if there's no one supervising, there's a kid who is a more vulnerable teenage age.
00:27:56.660No. Again, polling is hyper-specific to you. And so, yeah, it's really tricky. So that's why we add these features to provide that nuance and flexibility for people.
00:28:10.480Okay, we're going to take one more quick break and we will be right back.
00:28:14.220and we're back i have i have a quick diversion how do you end up in this job
00:28:27.460a series of twists and turns so i'm a lawyer i still have my bar card i started out
00:28:36.140you know i started out a big firm i was a prosecutor for eight and a half years
00:28:42.060and then pivoted back to litigation for a little bit.
00:28:45.840And then I had this existential, I guess I could say it's not a midlife crisis because
00:28:52.780it was pre-midlife, but an existential career crisis where I had two kids and I was really
00:28:58.400trying to figure out where I wanted to go.
00:29:02.040And I spent a good couple of months meeting people and literally just cold calling people
00:29:46.880And so eventually I met somebody who was overseeing trust and safety at a tech company.
00:29:53.400And he met me and we immediately clicked.
00:29:56.480And that's how I ended up pivoting to tech.
00:29:58.780But in terms of my passions, I've always been very mission driven.
00:30:03.480I've always focused on advocating for other people, especially vulnerable people.
00:30:10.960And when I was a prosecutor, I was instinctively drawn to working on domestic violence cases, child cases, and then working with gang violence victims, including a lot of teens and community members.
00:30:27.300So that's always been my passion. And then I think after having kids, it became much more important to me to work on child related issues. So that's that's how I ended up in this line of work. But it wasn't a linear path.
00:30:44.520Well, I mean, I like to hear that because I feel like I'm pivoting careers every five
00:30:49.080minutes at this point, as is a lot of our audience.
00:30:52.620We're all navigating this brave new world.
00:30:56.020And, you know, I tell people all the time, I'm like, just have a conversation with everyone
00:31:00.360about what they do because you never know what you want to do next.
00:31:05.760And I think the power of connections is a strong one.
00:31:09.740And so, you know, I'm grateful for all of the random people I met during that three-month stint because it was, again, a really far-reaching kind of wild ride of talking to everybody from, you know, the former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California to real estate agents to people in tech.
00:31:35.020And I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. And so now when people reach out to me to ask about my career, I'm always open to talking to them and supporting them. And I think community connections really, really matter. So, yeah, I'm with you.
00:31:51.700yeah um i think about real estate agent a strange amount actually
00:31:57.200i look at my house sometimes and i think i could use a new house uh or help from a real estate
00:32:05.260agent so i'm with you on that yeah i would have made a terrible real estate agent though terrible
00:32:08.940no i mean i'd be terrible i'd be terrible it's one of those i mean i also think about working
00:32:11.880at trader joe's because they have a very good playlist but the thing the things we think about
00:32:17.400at three in the morning. The last few questions I want to ask are about what kids post. Are there
00:32:26.580any restrictions on what children are allowed to post? And then who's allowed to view that content?
00:32:33.460There have been so many stories in the New York Times about bad actors searching for mostly young
00:32:39.580women on Instagram. And then, you know, also young women, very young women who have posted content
00:32:46.840that feels very adult yeah so let me let me untangle that or disentangle that a little bit
00:32:53.780because it was 50 questions at once yeah i know totally no but they go together hand in hand so
00:32:59.460it's a good segue so i'll start first with the content which i alluded to earlier but i think
00:33:05.600some examples might be really helpful here so we have community standards that tell our community
00:33:14.660and you can go and look at them and read them if you want, Joe. They are written in a way
00:33:21.020which I think people can rock what's allowed and what isn't allowed. And basically it applies to
00:33:27.760everybody on the platform. So if somebody posts, I think eating disorders is always a good example
00:33:35.100that I go to. If somebody posts something that glorifies an eating disorder, that content is
00:33:44.940removed irrespective of whether you're a teen posting that content, you're an adult posting
00:33:51.480that content, or you're a teen or adult on the other side. It violates their standards, it's
00:33:56.560removed. But we recognize that a teen's content experience should not be that of an adult because
00:34:03.960as we all know teens are developmentally in a very different place than adults and so we go
00:34:09.080further for teens when it comes to the content that either they're posting or that they see
00:34:14.660and so when it comes to again like eating disorders I think is a good example if somebody
00:34:22.600posts content that doesn't necessarily rise to the level of violating our community standards
00:34:27.900but that might come closer for example let's say somebody isn't glorifying their eating disorder
00:34:32.880but is posting something that is problematic, like they're talking about, you know, how they
00:34:39.060struggled with their diet that day and ate only 10 grapes or on like a high, you know, calorie
00:34:45.380reduced intake. That content might actually be okay for an adult to process, but we worked with
00:34:53.780experts and our experts told us that teens should not be seeing that content. And so it's deemed
00:35:01.840age-inappropriate content. And if a teen posts it, others will not see it, including their friends.
00:35:10.580And we certainly don't recommend that type of content to teens either. So again, teen content
00:35:18.320that they see, you know, we go further for them than adults. In terms of your second question
00:35:26.520as to, you know, what content an adult might see when it comes to, you know, potentially sexually
00:35:38.440suggestive content or other content. We do a number of things on the back end to address that.
00:35:44.360You know, we, again, take down content that violates our community standards. And we recently
00:35:50.840announced a range of new safety features that were specifically designed to further protect
00:35:57.220people, including teens, from sextortion, because I know that that's one of the areas that's been
00:36:02.420in the news and it's on the rise. But we know that scammers are targeting teens or young adults
00:36:10.760and are threatening to share out their intimate imagery unless the teen or young adult complies
00:36:18.040with their financial demands and so we're trying to make it even harder for sextortion criminals
00:36:23.680to succeed and we do it through a number of mechanisms it includes um you know the teen
00:36:30.660accounts launch and some of the protections that i discussed earlier in terms of defaulting all
00:36:35.480teens to private accounts right and ensuring that we have messaging restrictions in place
00:36:41.500We also hide follower and following lists from potentially scammy accounts.
00:36:48.280If a teen is talking to somebody and we start getting signals, Joe, that that person is
00:36:53.080potentially problematic, we will pop up a safety notice to teens.
00:36:58.340And it's basically within their DMs, they'll get a notice that says, you know, the person
00:37:03.520you're talking with, you know, you may want to be careful about how you interact with
00:37:10.280We also let them know that they may be chatting with somebody who's in a different country. We also remove the ability to take screenshots or screen recordings of ephemeral images and videos that are sent in Instagram, DM, and Messenger.
00:37:26.380we offer live chat support with crisis text line in the u.s if somebody's reporting a child safety
00:37:33.420violation including threats to share private images and we have our new nudity protection
00:37:41.280feature that we launched globally and we're rolling it out that's on by default for users
00:37:46.480under 18 so there are a number of things that we're doing to protect teens and young adults
00:37:53.400from, you know, a lot of these issues that have been popping up, including also removing another,
00:37:59.200I think it was like 1,600 Facebook groups and accounts that were linked to the Yahoo boys in
00:38:05.520Nigeria who were trying to, you know, recruit and organize new scammers. So it's an ongoing
00:38:12.080development. And I'm really proud about also our campaign where we worked with Thorne and
00:38:20.260NICMIC to educate teens about sextortion. And also we worked with influencers and creators
00:38:28.740to share that out in terms of videos and educating parents, because the other part of this
00:38:34.260is that parents should be having those very tricky and sometimes like uncomfortable conversations
00:38:42.040with their teens about this, which I frankly, I unfortunately had to have this conversation with
00:38:48.920my tween maybe five months ago. So these conversations are important. So we're trying
00:38:54.860to not only educate teens, but also equip their parents with an understanding of all the tools
00:39:00.260and work that we're doing. I mean, I'm a massive advocate that there has to be
00:39:04.960new media literacy in schools, starting in kindergarten, frankly, that we need to be
00:39:11.060educating children about what social platforms are, what news platforms are. My kids still see
00:39:17.660me read a newspaper but i don't know for how much longer they will most like i can't find it i can't
00:39:23.200find the sunday times anywhere near me anymore but it's it's a thing that i don't want to heap
00:39:29.300it all on parents i i don't think we can heap it all on corporations the government has to step in
00:39:36.020schools need to step in we all need to be working together to try to solve this and make it better
00:39:42.640because i don't want to be the person that just shits on social media all the time it has done
00:39:47.060tremendous good for a lot of folks and for a lot of people. And it has democratized a lot of
00:39:53.000industries in really interesting ways and also given women power in a lot of interesting ways.
00:39:58.680But, man, I mean, I agree with you. I think bringing parents to the table is incredibly
00:40:10.380important and it is beneficial. We don't want to overwhelm parents, though. And I do think that
00:40:15.400governments play a really critical role in helping us set standards. And I think
00:40:24.120the one point that I want to make is that I don't think they're divorced from each other.
00:40:30.240I actually think that there are ways that the government can step in to make it easier on
00:40:38.240parents and to really support them as they're supporting their teens so that it's more of a
00:40:45.480symbiotic relationship. And I'm sure you're aware of this already, and I've been talking a lot about
00:40:52.280it, but we want federal legislation in the U.S. that gets at the root of this. And the root of
00:41:02.660this is that parents should be they should be involved in a way that makes it easier on them
00:41:12.780and i think that the way that you do this is that you get parent consent at the app store level
00:41:20.780anytime that their teen under 16 wants to download and and i think that like the way
00:41:27.680that you guys can't do that right like that's out of your hands it's it's we want federal
00:41:33.440legislation on us right and and the reason why is it makes it easier on parents and it creates
00:41:39.820an ecosystem that is protective of teens across the board and the way that it would work
00:41:46.380is simply you as a parent and it gets back to you'd asked about age at the beginning of
00:41:51.780grappling with the fact that people lie about their age. And age is a linchpin of your experience
00:41:59.080online, right? Like if you know somebody's age, you can feed them into age appropriate experiences.
00:42:05.120And the problem right now is that we have a patchwork of inconsistent state laws and there
00:42:12.280are laws in other countries as well, where we have different requirements across different apps,
00:42:20.120different ages, different criteria. And we're looking for a solution that would
00:42:27.640create a standard that would apply to every app. And so imagine a world, Joe, in which
00:42:35.040you decide your kid is ready for a phone, your teenager is ready for a phone. You buy your 13
00:42:42.300year old a phone. When you set that phone up with your 13 year old, and this is the way it works
00:42:48.880today already with a lot of my friends who have teens, the parent puts the teen's age in the
00:42:54.400phone. The parent establishes the parent-child relationship and you create that relationship
00:43:00.620through your account and your teen's account. And what we're advocating for is that anytime
00:43:06.140your teen under 16 wants to download an app, you as the parent would be in the position where you
00:43:14.220decide whether your teen is a ready for the app. And if you agree that, okay, my 13 year old is
00:43:21.340ready for Instagram. If that's your decision, you make that decision. And then at that time that you
00:43:27.180give consent, Joe, the app would get the age range of what your teen is, right? So if your teen is
00:43:34.46013, it would be 13 to 15 years old. And then the app is able to put your teen into that age
00:43:41.160appropriate experience. So for teen accounts, it would be, okay, we're going to put them in the
00:43:44.900strictest settings because they're under 16 years old. But the idea here is that no matter what your
00:43:51.700teen's age is, it's going to be the same age across every app that your teen wants to download.
00:43:57.740You as the parent, if your teen is under 16, has the ability to approve or not. And you as a parent
00:44:07.000get visibility into what apps your teen is on because as they get older and as i've seen with
00:44:12.380my kids there's a proliferation of apps that they're on and common sense media and university
00:44:18.400of michigan came out with a report last year and on average a teen is on 40 apps a week which is
00:44:25.800staggering bananas and it's bananas and as a parent you know even if you're not gonna have
00:44:34.740supervision on and you're not going to be going from app to app, you should have the ability
00:44:40.540to know what apps your teen is on and to also decide whether they're ready for it or not.
00:44:45.740And again, like every teen is different and every parent is going to have a sense of what
00:44:50.420their teen is ready for or not. So that's what we're advocating for. And yes, it's not our
00:44:54.960decision. It's not a Nicole Lopez decision, but that is what we're pushing for.
00:45:00.260is there anything that i'm not asking you
00:45:04.480i mean i'm an open book joe so i don't know i mean if you're asking me about my existential
00:45:14.940crisis i touched on that years ago my middle-aged crisis how as a as a mom what are you most worried
00:45:22.380about and what would you like what would your dream scenario be of protecting kids on social
00:45:28.560media platforms? So I'll start with my worries. I think of all of the harms out there, and maybe
00:45:36.780it's because I'm a former prosecutor, but, you know, the sextortion and child safety harms are
00:45:44.240always the ones that come to mind because I want to make sure that my kid is not in a situation
00:45:52.900that leads to, you know, unfortunate circumstances.
00:45:57.300So that's one that I've always been concerned about,
00:47:19.720But, like, this is the work that needs to get done, and we're doing it.
00:47:24.200I loved this conversation, and I really, I hope that we can keep it going, because I just feel like having an open dialogue about all of these issues, knowing what's available, what's possible, and that there's real human beings and human mothers working on this problem.