Richard Guerry founded the Institute for Responsible Online and Cell-Phone Communication, based in Mount Laurel, New Jersey. He spoke last month to students and parents at Beacon High School and Rombout Middle School.
What challenges do young people face on social media?
One challenge is their own choices and what they’re putting out. If somebody is oversharing and putting out content that might be deemed exploitable, you could think, “If they put that on social media, what else are they hiding in the cloud?” The grooming or social engineering of youth is something that happens quite a bit and can start with someone finding something they deem to be damaging. Social media, through its algorithms, will push things to minors, such as self-harm or playing off people’s body-image issues. They do it to adults as well. It puts people in an echo chamber and starts them down a rabbit hole. The longer they’re there, the more revenue it generates for the platform.
What can parents or guardians do?
Think about whether you have an open line of communication with your child. If they see something that upsets them or they receive a message that scares them, do they have a trusted adult to talk to? To put a child into a world connected to billions of people, it’s not a question of if but when that child will make a mistake, whether it’s going to a website that might affect them negatively or posting something that affects them negatively. An adult saying, “Hey, you don’t have to worry about that communication. That’s a scam,” can minimize the damage. Things can turn catastrophic when we put kids into a world with content that they may not be well versed in, and they have nobody to go to.
How did this become your cause?
I owned an interactive marketing agency for a long time. In 2009 a school asked me to come to a health-and-wellness fair and talk about “sexting.” I had no idea how they found me and no idea what sexting meant. I said, “I don’t do what you’re asking. However, I’ve been in technology for quite some time, so if you’d like me to talk about using it responsibly, I’d be happy to.” I saw how little parents, teachers and students understood. We’ve made technology available to everybody, but did we do any training? We can’t just wait for people to get in trouble, put labels like “sexting” on their behavior and then do workshops. We need to give people advice before they purchase devices for their kids. After about a week of research and self-reflection, I left the corporate world, started a nonprofit and here we are, 16 years later.
Does it sink in for the kids when you do presentations at schools?
I hear kids talk when they come into the room, especially when it’s the same school each year. What I hear afterward is that it wasn’t what they were expecting. We give them tips on how to look at technology differently. For example, Snapchat is an app that marketed itself for years around “disappearing content.” I bring glasses from Snapchat that have cameras in them, and I ask if anyone finds it ironic that the company that markets disappearing, ephemeral content gave us glasses that can take a photo of someone’s screen. Kids appreciate the angles I take, trying to help them navigate this world differently. There are people drinking and driving right now. Everybody knows it’s illegal, but people still do it. But there’s a difference between making a blind and informed decision. Kids hear the message and realize it helps them make more informed decisions.
Should we be asking the social media companies to protect children?
Yes. Meta recently made changes to Instagram so that minors, by default, will have private accounts with parental controls. All social media companies say you should be 13, but the problem is that the child must be honest for the changes to work. You know a child who’s either not supposed to have social media or who will have restrictions is not going to be honest about their birthdate. Seventh or eighth graders who want social media can tell their parents, “This is my account,” but that doesn’t stop them from creating a fake account, and they might be calling the wrong attention to themselves through that account. They’re doing it because they don’t want to be under the rules of social media.
