On Tuesday, 3 February, I spoke at the event “Grenzeloos Online? Leeftijdsverificatie en de Digitale Generatie” (Borderless Online? Age Verification and the Digital Generation), hosted by Offlimits. It was a lovely afternoon with interesting talks from Simone van der Hof (Leiden U) and Tiffany van Stormbroek (NICAM). Simone provided sharp insights into age assurance, explaining the essential criteria it must meet and emphasizing the children’s rights must to be central to the process. Tiffany shared how the Kijkwijzer model, which is typically used for media classification, can be adapted to assess and classify online content effectively.
During my talk, I focused on the association between social media and wellbeing; the increase in digital overuse; why social media bans will not help; and what all of us can do to help young people. We discussed the need more positive friction online; why and how we can help parents (with great new research from my colleague Wouter at Connected Minds); and the digital competencies of today’s youth (featuring new data from our Digital Competence monitor). (For a copy of the slide deck, please contact me.)
The day closed with perspectives from Meta, Snap Inc., and TikTok, who joined Robbert Hoving and a youth panel to engage in a conversation about the role of social media platforms in today’s digital environment.