Stephen Scheeler: Former Facebook CEO for Australia and New Zealand on whether parental controls are the way forward for social media

Following the launch of Australia's ban on social media for under-16s, there's been debate over whether New Zealand should follow this example.

Meta's Global Head of Safety, Antigone Davis, has labelled the full ban a 'fool's errand' and claims parental controls are the way to go.

Former Facebook CEO for Australia and New Zealand Stephen Scheeler says parental controls are a safety feature that should be considered - but it won't solve the wider problem.

"I don't think it's a total solution, but I think it is another tool in the toolkit." 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from News Talks, it'd be
follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio. Now.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Missa's global head of safety Rickins, we should consider other
options instead of doing the same as Australia and banning
under sixteen year olds from social media and Tigany Davis
is in the country in New Zealand for a safety conference.
She was on the my co hosting Breakfast this morning.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
If you put parental approval, so anytime you download an app,
a team goes to download an app, a parent has
to say yes or no. In other words, you're starting
with a restriction around entering and you're basically saying Okay,
yes you can do this or no you can't. That's
a better way to do that across the entire Internet.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Stephen Sheila is the former CEO of Facebook Australia and
New Zealand and he's with US High Stephen.

Speaker 4 (00:54):
Good afternoon.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Do you agree with her that parental controls are preferable.

Speaker 5 (01:00):
I think parental controls at the at the app store
level would be another good safety feature that should be
It should be considered and the platforms have been saying
that for a while their belief is it's you know,
it's too hard to do this in the app itself.
You should push it back to the app stores, which
are controlled by Apple and Google, and have them kind

(01:22):
of you know, making sure the parents are certifying whether
an app, any app, winds up on a kid's phone.
But as you can imagine, that's that's part of a
solution at making social media and the Internet more safe.
But it doesn't you know, it doesn't solve the problem
of well, okay, what happens when that individual that team
gets on to social media. You still want to have
that side of the equations safe as well. So I

(01:45):
don't think it's a total solution, but I think it
is another tool in the toolkit.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
I mean, it seems to me.

Speaker 4 (01:52):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
The parental controls are a great idea, don't they already?
They do already exist. I'm not imagining the say.

Speaker 4 (01:58):
Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 5 (01:59):
Anybody who's listening who's got kids and you are trying
to see what your kids are doing on social media.
You've all been in, many of us have been in
and fiddled with the controls. The problem is at that level,
it's confusing, right, your kids around six or seven different
social media apps, the controls are usually set to your
default on, not default off, so you have to go

(02:20):
and turn things off. It's hard to figure out, and
then you've got to your kids can go and get
around you and change it back, and so at least
a lot on parents they have to try to figure out.

Speaker 4 (02:29):
And most many of us aren't tech experts in the
first place.

Speaker 5 (02:32):
So it does exist, but it's still probably is too
difficult for.

Speaker 4 (02:36):
Parents to make sense of and really use in a.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Practical Okay, so tell me if I'm wrong here. It
seems to me that these things are useful, but as
you say, they already exist and we don't use them.
The default is actually that people don't use them. The
benefit of a social media ban, as opposed to this,
is that it creates the default setting of no, you're
not allowed to unleash your parent decides to break the rules,

(02:58):
and that actually gives parents a lot of power that
is really quite helpful to parents. Is that fair.

Speaker 5 (03:04):
I think that's a good way of thinking about it.
In fact, it is this dea what's the default? And
I think what what Meta is arguing is the default
should be at the parents should have the control at
the point of downloading an app from the app store,
and that's where the parents should say yes or no,
rather than having the government say no. But I think
you can argue, you know, reasonable people can disagree as

(03:26):
to where that point should be. But I think it
is all about giving parents more control and making it
simpler for parents to be able to handle, you know,
the fire hose of stuff that's coming at them from
social media.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
Okay, so we are what it's coming up. Actually, a
couple of months since the Australians banned the kids from
getting on the social media is would you would you
describe it as a success?

Speaker 5 (03:46):
Look, I've seen you'll we have to be careful, right,
it's early days. Yeah, it takes time to change human behavior.
And this is you know, you've got a whole literally
millions of kids suddenly having something taken away from them.
Those kids are trying to get around it now, right,
that's a lot of what's happening, and it will take
time for this to become the new normal. And so

(04:07):
I think really the judge success or failure, you've got
to look for a year or two into the cycle
to see where it lands.

Speaker 4 (04:14):
So that's far.

Speaker 5 (04:14):
It's really hard to see. I think both sides are
all sides here. I think there's more than just two sides.
There's parents and kids as well. They all have opinions,
and there's bits of data. But I think it's too
early to say.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
I haven't seen any compliance data data, which I think
is probably a key to it. Have you seen any of.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
It out yet?

Speaker 5 (04:33):
I haven't seen. No, I haven't seen any, So I
wait for that. I'm still I think we still have
to wait for better data to be able to assess this.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
And Stephen one final question. The fact that we've got
Antigony Davis going around the world making the case for
anything other than a band suggests to me that Meta
is reasonably worried about this idea catching on. What do
you think, Well.

Speaker 4 (04:57):
Yeah, I think they are worried, and look, it's good.

Speaker 5 (04:59):
I don't know antike any Personally, I think it's good
to see Meta have people out in the market. I
haven't seen that a lot, to be honest with you,
that they're out, They've got people out there talking to
the media more actively. I think personally, I think it
was a mistake that they didn't do that, but they
tried to lobby government. They made pronouncements, but they really

(05:20):
didn't have the face of the company out there talking.
And I thought she made you know, she made some
good points and made some good case but I think
it is showing that yes, there's naturally they're going to
be worried. They're worried that a big chunk of their
business is going to be restricted, and indeed it already
has been in Australia, and you know, this just puts
more sand in the wheels of them trying to run

(05:40):
their business.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
Yeah, hey, thank you very much. Steven has always appreciated
talking to you. Stephen she Loave a form of Facebook.
Australia New Zealand.

Speaker 1 (05:46):
CEO for more from News Talks a't B listen live
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