I had the chance to speak at Meta’s Youth Summit on 18 February 2024 in Brussels (on a beautiful sunny day!) It was an interesting day, with several inspiring conversations. Personally, I was happy to sit on a panel where we discussed the new report – Empowering and Protecting Youth Online: Streamling Legislation and Promoting Positive Digital Experiences – lead authored by my colleague and friend Sameer Hinduja. He does a far better job than I could on summarizing this report, so I invite you to visit his website to learn more. I also enjoyed chatting from Charles Howard from ThinkYoung, who contributed the youth voice to this report in a meaningful way.
For me, a key takeaway from the report was the necessary actions by both regulators and platforms (along with a lot of support for parents and caregivers; and digital competence support for youth). I also heard a big push for age verification at the device level, which I find intriguing but wonder the implementation possibility in the European landscape.
Ultimately, we know the digital space has plenty of good in it, but we aren’t getting it right yet. The Summit made clear that people are willing to lean in to improve the youth media ecosystem. The next step: let’s do the work.