Baroness Luciana Berger: The Algorithm Destroys Childhood, Why Do We Still Allow It?

Luciana Berger is a member of the House of Lords and former MP, she is a leading voice on mental health, public policy and more, internationally recognised for speaking out against antisemitism with courage, resilience and moral clarity.

Listen to her 18 mins talk at our first ever KEN talks event in London.

Brought to you by Joice Global & Shalom Speakers. Supported by Israel Bonds.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Good evening, everyone, and thank you, Louisa, for that very, very kind welcome. Um, I'm not here this evening to talk to you about national political leadership, but I am here to talk about something else that's quite important. You heard in my uh biography in the introduction quite a lot, but what you didn't hear is that I'm also a mother to two children of primary age, they're seven and nine. Uh, my children attend Jewish school. And for many children, they use social media. They're on Snapchat, they're on Instagram, they're on TikTok. There are millions of children in this country that are on those platforms. For some, it's deadly. And I say that, bearing in mind and thinking this evening, about two children in particular. Mia Janine was 14 years old when she took her own life, largely driven by her experience on social media. Kibbi Van Bulla was 16 when she took her life. And I know about these children because I have met both their parents. I met both their parents when they came to Parliament on the day of a debate that we were having about whether or not we should introduce the minimum age of social media for young people under the age of 16. I was a sponsor to that amendment in the House of Lords. It was a cross-party amendment that a number of peers were campaigning for, myself included. And we had these parents come to parliament not to seek condolences or to grieve, but to campaign because they strongly believe that until social media companies clean up their act, we need to have a minimum age of 16 in our country. I'm going to run through over our time together over the course of the next 15 minutes or so, the scale of the problem, why this is an issue, and why we should have this ban in place. I'm also going to seek to dispel some of the objections that you might have heard in the media. I want to focus us slightly on why this matters, particularly. We're here tonight as a Jewish audience, why this matters to Jewish children. And then I'm going to at the end seek to share with you some action and what you might want to do after this evening if you feel compelled by the case that I've made today. Who remembers when they were first on Facebook? Put up your hand. I remember it well. In fact, I look back to my earliest days on Facebook and pictures of my birthday parties in my twenties having lots of fun. I remember when it was something that we used to share our relationship status, to share our holiday picks. Certainly, there were lots of ways in which we enjoyed it. And I remember really fondly those days where I would come home from work and I would finish Twitter. It had a beginning, middle, and end, the days before auto-scrolling. But we now find ourselves in a very different environment. And I will share with you some of the statistics, some of which you may know, some of which you may not have heard. But you might not know that there are a thousand people arrested every single month in our country for paedophilia, most of which happens online. The NSPCC tells us that there are a hundred cases every single day of child sexual abuse material, over 40% of which surfaces on the app Snapchat. We have an extraordinary situation in this country where 23 presidents of all the medical royal colleges in our country have signed a letter, come together to call the challenge that we face in this country, because of social media, a public health emergency. These are the professionals that in their accident and emergency units and in their psychiatric inpatient units and in their eating disorder units are seeing the effects of social media on our children and young people every single day. And there's a Jewish additional challenge to this. And you may be aware of an amazing organization called the Anti-Semitism Policy Trust. They've done lots of important work in this country and they ran an experiment. They created 10 fake profiles on TikTok of young people aged 15. And they saw what happened over the course of a two-week period amongst those 10 profiles. Five and a half thousand videos were directed at those 10 fake profiles. And what did they find? For young people in a certain camp left leaning, so a young person that might campaign or be interested in climate issues and trans issues, pro-immigration, within 90 minutes, that profile received videos from former Hamas spokespeople, from representatives pushing propaganda from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and pushing conspiracies about Jewish control of governments. Another profile set up for a young person who wasn't interested in politics or current affairs, a young person male interested in fitness. That young person received within one hour material that was pushing Holocaust conspiracies, that was diminishing the Holocaust, that was pushing lots of different anti-Semitic global conspiracies, and was also pushing things to do pro-Hitler. You might have heard of the meme, the Happy Merchant meme. It's an anti-Semitic meme, an anti-Semitic picture. And this picture features time and time again under just mainstream videos, on average, 34,000 likes of this meme, 5,500 shares before any action is taken to bring it down. And this is happening time and time again. And the theme tune, have an agua, something that we use, we sing, we enjoy, but have an aguilla is being used systematically on social media as an anti-Semitic dog whistle to smuggle hate past moderation systems, is surfacing time and time again. Now you hear all this and you think, surely this can't be happening. It sounds awful. Surely the social media companies must be doing something about it. But the evidence points to the contrary. Meta is the company that owns Facebook, Insta, and WhatsApp. And they have written down, and this is quite startling, if we want a big if we want to win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens. That was the line that surfaced in the recent landmark case in California just a few weeks ago, which found Meta and also YouTube liable for intentionally building addictive platforms. That is what they're providing to our young people. It was the head of Instagram that said that 16 hours of daily use on Instagram is problematic, but not addiction. I would suggest to the contrary. Meta's got absolutely no idea how many under 13s are on its app. And Pinterest, that is responsible in part for the tragic death of Molly Russell, who you may have heard of, who took her own life age 14 in this country. Despite knowing that, they continued to host scores and material promoting a self-harm. Instagram also known that its platform was promoting negative images around body image for young girls. Again, only sought to grow that platform. And perhaps one of the most concerning issues of all is what happens with TikTok. So we have TikTok in this country. TikTok is owned by a company called Bike Dance. In China, Bike Dance doesn't provide TikTok to children there, they've got a completely different platform. It's a platform that only allows young people on it for 40 minutes a day and it only provides educational content. They don't serve the same algorithm to children in China. There's also again the issue of how this impacts on Jewish children. There was a big issue on social media around, particularly on TikTok, where people were using the line total Jewish death. That was surfacing on so many different posts. It was quickly replaced when that was taken down with totally jolly day as a replacement for and intended to mean exactly the same thing, but that got through all of the barriers. I would suggest that the algorithm isn't broken. It's doing exactly what it was designed to do. And for Jewish children and young people, it's even more damaging. I've heard lots of the challenge to say, well, you know, introduce a minimum age of 16 for our young people and they're going to get around it. Well, Australia has introduced a minimum age of 16 for social media and it's early days, but what they have shown is that for 90% of children and young people, they are restricted from progressing at the first gate. We can take a lot from that and certainly learn from it. I also hear the charge well, this is a parenting issue. We should leave it down to the parents. Now, anyone that's a parent who might be on the various WhatsApp groups, who might be part of the safe phone groups on WhatsApp, you'll know that this is a constant theme of discussion, and quite uh quite usually this is a this is a an area where parents want support, and we don't expect parents uh to contend with tobacco companies when it comes to cigarettes. We do regulate and we do legislate, and that's why we should apply the same principle in this experience. I hear also that the evidence isn't settled. I point to the letter from the 23 presidents of the Royal Colleges that say to the contrary. Professor Jonathan Haites, who is the author of The Anxious Generation, has compiled what he refers to as the mountain of evidence. I ask, how high does that mountain need to be before we say it's enough? And certainly we've had evidence in so many other areas and we still take action. We've also heard that we need more data, and that's certainly been the assertion from people at very uh at very senior levels. On the data, I I would attest that when children died from eating nuts at school, we didn't commission further research. We banned nuts in school, and so I would suggest that we should be applying the same principle when it comes to our children and young people. And we've certainly banned alcohol and tobacco for our young people in this country. Certainly we know that many kids still smoke and drink, but I would say that this is uh we shouldn't be chasing perfection, we should be chasing something that's going to make a difference. On the Jewish uh dimension, I also come at this and think about it in the context of Bakurach Nefesh, which is how we have a responsibility wherever possible to save life. And it's not on all cases a life or death matter, but for too many it could be. And certainly uh I would uh pursue that and think about how we preserve life. The question is uh not what the algorithm is doing to our children, we certainly know what the algorithm is doing to our children. The question is: what kind of community do we choose to be, and what action do we want our government to take? In conclusion, I met the very, very brave parents of Mia and Kibby and the growing group of parents in this country that are being bereaved. They've suffered the ultimate loss and endure the ultimate pain every single day, and very selflessly are campaigning to make sure that no other parent or child endures what they have to face all the time. We had an extraordinary situation in the House of Lords when it came to the vote. And we had the first vote in the House of Lords, which we won, and the House of Commons voted against it. We had a second vote in the House of Lords, and again the House of Commons voted against it. We had a third vote in the House of Lords with an even bigger majority. Uh, we won that vote, but the House of Commons voted against it. And then something changed. And I point to the growing base of evidence, the landmark ruling that came out from California, from the growing voices from medical professionals and the growing number of parliamentarians, and the parents who, over a quarter of a million of which in this country, took the time to write to their local representative to say, enough, we need to take some action, we need to pause until those social media companies clean up their act, and the government changed its position. And so at the end of April, under the Child Bill, Child and Health Bill, the government have now said that following the consultation which is currently underway, they will bring forward something that the Secretary of State must bring forward measures to introduce age-based or functionality-based restrictions for under 16s on social media. The consultation is still underway, but this is an opportunity to inform it. And I conclude just with sharing with you three things for you to consider that you might want to do following this event this evening. The first one is to complete that consultation. So if you're a parent or a grandparent or a car or someone that's interested or thinks that this matters, anyone can go onto the government website to complete that consultation. Every consultation response matters, and you might wish to bring forward the issues that specifically impact Jewish children in terms of the anti-Semitism that we know that's so prevalent. The second thing is to back the ban. We've got the commitment, but we still don't have the detail, and so every voice is an important support for the campaign. And the third thing is to speak to children, not to shame them or to be angry at them, but we know that the algorithm has already found many children, and that's why it's important to speak to them about what they're experiencing. There is a global movement for change, and I mentioned Australia that's already introduced the ban, Malaysia's following suit this year. There are a number of countries, including France and Italy, and Spain and Denmark, that are currently piloting age-based restrictions. The European Union has voted to introduce a restriction for under-16s. Greece is following suit and also Brazil. There are countries and parliaments that have come together and have decided internally within their countries that it is enough and that we need to take action. And we know so much so that the companies themselves, we I think the situation is getting a lot worse, and unless they're compelled to do so, then they won't make any changes. I just end with the fact that 78% of Gen Z, that is young people age 14 to 29, say that they would restrict their own children from accessing social media for as long as possible. That's because they know what it's doing to them. It was too late for Mia and it was too late for Kibby. I want to ensure that the algorithm doesn't affect any other children. Thank you.