The Social Media Safety Ruse: How Meta’s Influence Campaigns Are Redefining Corporate Spin

As Australia becomes the latest country to ban teens under 16 from using social media, tech companies like Meta are increasingly relying on influencer campaigns to sell their safety measures as a solution to problems they themselves helped create. Whenever governments discuss regulations for teen use of social media, Meta springs into action, recruiting influencers to promote its parental and other safety controls.

This might seem like a clever PR move – who wouldn’t want to partner with a brand committed to keeping teens safe? However, scratch beneath the surface, and it becomes clear that Meta’s reliance on influencers is a symptom of its own toxic reputation. People no longer trust Meta’s word.

Concerns about teen use of social media have been growing since at least 2021, when whistleblowers like Frances Haugen and Arturo Bejar shared internal Meta documents showing the company knew teens were being exposed to harmful content but didn’t work to mitigate those harms. Several states in the US have sued Meta for allegedly making its platform addictive to younger users.

Meta’s sudden interest in safety measures is likely driven by a desire to avoid further regulation. Countries like Australia and Indonesia have introduced blanket bans on teens using social media, and others are following suit. In this context, Meta’s influencer campaigns become less about genuine concern for teen safety and more about damage control.

The use of influencers to peddle corporate products as solutions to problems they’ve helped create is a worrying trend. It suggests that the reputation of Meta and other social media giants remains more important than actual safety measures. This is evident in the case of Tammin Sursok, an actor who attended Meta’s “Instagram Safety Camp” in Australia. She shared posts praising Meta for its work in keeping teens safe, but conveniently left out her paid partnership with the company – and her language was carefully scripted to align with Meta’s talking points.

This is not just about Meta; it’s about the broader trend of corporate influence in the tech industry. Companies are increasingly using influencers to shape public opinion on issues like teen safety, often with little transparency or accountability. As governments around the world continue to grapple with regulating social media use for teens, one thing is clear: until companies like Meta take genuine responsibility for their role in creating and exacerbating these problems, we’ll only see more of this kind of cynical PR spin.

The real question now is what’s next – will other countries follow Australia’s lead and ban teens from using social media entirely? And how will companies like Meta respond to this growing trend of regulation? One thing is certain: until they stop relying on influencers to peddle their safety measures as a solution, we’ll never truly know.