Wynn-Williams has spoken about how Facebook actively targeted adolescents aged 13-17, tracking their emotional vulnerabilities and selling that data to advertisers. A deleted selfie? That’s a prompt to push beauty products. A sign of depression? That vulnerability becomes a commercial asset.
“It is not a company that looks after users,” she said, “particularly those [aged] 13 to 17, [who] they regard as vulnerable yet very valuable.”
This isn’t a side effect, it’s the business model. Addiction equals engagement. Engagement equals revenue.
US senators who’ve reviewed Meta’s internal documents are calling it what it is.
“Meta lied about the generational harm it was doing,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal. Senator Dick Durbin put it even more bluntly: “Guess what model they chose? Big Tobacco.”
And he’s right. Big Tech has followed the exact same playbook: deny the harm, target youth, delay regulation and profit off the damage. They sell an addictive product, fight safety measures and leave parents and communities to clean up the mess.
The difference? This time it’s happening in our homes, right in the hands of our children.
Parents in New Zealand are doing their best. But the tools aren’t keeping up. Only one in five parents use parental controls. Fewer than one in three have household rules. And while many feel confident talking to their kids, only 22% actually have those conversations often.
This isn’t about blaming parents, it’s about recognising the impossible task they’re up against. Because the environment our kids are growing up in wasn’t designed with their wellbeing in mind. It was designed to capture attention and monetise it.
Tech companies point to things such as TikTok’s “Wind Down” mode or Stem content feeds as evidence they’re acting responsibly. But as Holly Brooker from Make Sense rightly notes, these are calculated moves to pre-empt regulation, not genuine, meaningful protections. The real safeguards – robust age verification, privacy-first design, safety-first algorithms – are still not on the table.
Implementing those would hurt profits, something Big Tech avoids at all costs, just like Big Tobacco. The similarity in tactics from these two industries, though happening decades apart, is striking.
This isn’t about banning children from the internet. It’s about drawing a line that says we value childhood and we’re willing to protect it. That means setting a minimum age for social media, equipping parents with better tools and properly funding schools and parents to deliver the kind of digital education our kids actually need.
We’ve seen the evidence. We’ve heard the testimonies. We know the harm.
And we should be incredibly proud as a nation to have a Kiwi like Sarah Wynn-Williams standing up to Big Tech. Her courage in speaking out, both as a former insider and as a parent, is not only brave, it’s leadership.
Now we need that same courage from our policymakers, before another generation is left to pay the price.
