Imagine walking into a library. The first thing that catches your eye is a poster with naked women and men, captioned: "New: same-day loans of porn magazines". A bit further in, you see shelves labelled "Literature on how to commit acts of terror - both for the far right and the far left".
This would, of course, never happen in the real world. Libraries are subject to restrictions and fulfil a democratic function as open, neutral meeting places. But what about the digital world? There are no democratic institutions deciding how digital infrastructure should be developed for the common good.
"When companies like Meta and Google invest heavily in developing design features and algorithms intended to capture and steer our attention, democratic institutions must invest just as heavily in understanding and regulating these systems. We must build digital communities where children and young people can participate safely, not shut them out," says researcher and philosopher Sebastian Watzl at the University of Oslo.
"The debate misses the point."
Watzl researches the attention economy in the interdisciplinary projects GoodAttention and Salient Solutions. Together with colleagues, he has recently published a policy brief in which they argue that the debate on age limits for social media misses the real problem.
"We have debates about screen time and age limits on social media, but in reality, the problem we face is far more wide-ranging. Our attention is in the hands of a few companies, like Google, Meta and X, located in Silicon Valley."
Part of the problem, Watzl believes, is that we have accepted this situation and become somewhat blind to what is happening. We think of these firms as purely technology companies, but in practice they operate as advertising agencies.
Another problem with the proposal to impose age restrictions on social media is that the category "social media" is itself not very precise.
"What counts as social media differs from country to country. Search engines, digital marketplaces, and now AI as well, are other environments that steer our attention," Watzl points out.
