A Meta executive fronted Parliament's Education and Workforce select committee on Monday.
A Meta executive fronted Parliament's Education and Workforce select committee on Monday.
Social media giant Meta says scrolling on Instagram is not intentionally designed to be addictive, as MPs probed the conglomerate over the potential harm of social media for young people.
Meta and competitor TikTok fronted Parliament’s Education and Workforce select committee hearing into the harms of social media onyoung people on Monday.
It comes as National MP Catherine Wedd puts forward a member’s bill to ban social media for under-16s, backed by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.
Meta’s regional director of policy, Mia Garlick, pushed back when asked by National MP Dr Vanessa Weenink about Instagram’s “potentially addictive” features such as infinite scrolling that was “basically biohacking the human dopamine axis”.
“I think the suggestion that our services are designed to be intentionally addictive really misrepresents our intentions and the work that we do do.”
Garlick said Meta wanted users to have a ”positive and intentional experience" and there were additional controls within Teen Accounts that allowed parents to set daily time limits.
National MP Vanessa Weenink during the Finance and Expenditure Select Committtee hearing at Parliament. Photo / Mark Mitchell
“Obviously, algorithm content ranking is designed to put the most relevant content up the top so you see the most interesting content first and then can go and see other things.”
In November 2024, Australia passed world-first legislation banning social media for under-16s. Garlick said the law was “rushed through I think in less than a week” and “we didn’t have a lot of conversations at the time around what we do do around age assurance”.
New data shows almost three-quarters of New Zealanders want to see social media banned for children under 14, both inside and outside of school.
The Ipsos report surveyed people from 30 countries, including 1002 New Zealanders aged over 18 between August 11-18.
Research participants ranked “the effects of social media and technology such as AI” as one of New Zealand’s top concerns, on par with poverty and inequality, and below mental health challenges, and bullying and peer pressure.
Although the committee hearing was initiated by Act MP Dr Parmjeet Parmar, Act does not support Wedd’s bill. The bill is sitting in Parliament’s member’s ballot waiting to get pulled at random for debate.
National MP Catherine Wedd has put forward a member's bill to ban social media for under 16-year-olds. Photo / Mark Mitchell
“There’s a big problem with kids and phones, but for every problem there’s a solution that is simple and wrong. A social media ban is one of those,” the party said.
Act suggests criminalising defamatory activity such as “deepfake” nude images, where an image of someone’s face can be put on a pornographic and degrading scene.
Act’s Laura McClure, the last submitter at Monday’s select committee, urged other MPs in the room to support her member’s bill that would make such artificial images illegal.
To bring attention to the issue, McClure held up a naked AI-generated image of herself in the House in May.
“This image is a naked image of me but it’s not real,” she told the House, holding the A3 printed photo aloft for all members to see.
“It took me less than five minutes to make a series of deep fakes of myself.”
