Teenagers call for greater control over social media

Young people are calling for greater control over what they see on social media after a new Irish study found many are being exposed to disturbing and sexually explicit content through platform algorithms.

Research carried out by the Insight Research Ireland Centre for Data Analytics at University College Dublin found that teenagers feel largely excluded from discussions about how social media platforms are designed and regulated, despite being among their most frequent users.

The study involved five focus groups with 87 transition year students from Irish schools and explored how young people experience social media as both a source of opportunity and a source of harm.

The findings, which will be presented later this month at the Association for Computer Machinery’s Interaction Design and Children conference in Brighton, suggest teenagers are increasingly aware of how platforms use their online behaviour to personalise content and maximise engagement.

Participants said they understood they were effectively “training the algorithm” through the content they viewed and interacted with, while recognising that their attention generated revenue for technology companies.

Although students described social media as an important space for entertainment, self expression and maintaining friendships, many also said they felt “trapped in a loop” by personalised recommendation systems and endless scrolling.

The research also highlighted concerns about the type of content reaching young users.

Several participants reported receiving inappropriate material, including unwanted sexual attention from older users, while others described recommendation systems serving disturbing content that bore little relation to what they had searched for.

Megan Nyhan, who led the research at UCD, said respondents described searching for “dress inspiration” only to be shown pornographic material, while others reported being exposed to disturbing content late at night.

“The respondents in this study revealed that they are subject to harm and emotional impact,” she said.

One participant also reported seeing “old men…send messages with a WhatsApp number for money” appear in their feed.

Students were also critical of existing digital wellbeing tools, arguing that screen time limiters introduced by platforms were largely “performative” and did little to help them manage their online habits.

Instead, participants called for practical measures that would give them greater control over the content they encountered, including tools allowing users to edit or influence recommendation algorithms, age appropriate content settings and options to filter or blur specific types of material.

“Despite being the primary stakeholders, young people are often absent from discussions about social media,” Ms Nyhan said.

“This study was designed to foreground teens’ voices and enable open dialogue about their experiences with algorithmic content curation.

“Teens are among the most frequent users of these platforms and yet their input is largely absent from planning, design, governance and regulation.”