“Social Media Addiction Is the Fault of Design, Not Children” ... Calls to Hold Platforms Accountable

[Financial News] Calls have emerged to hold platform companies, rather than individuals and families, responsible for social media addiction. Nine related bills have been introduced in the National Assembly, but they are fragmented and the level of penalties is weak. The argument is that a combined legislative package bringing together age restrictions, a ban on addictive design, and mandatory risk assessments is needed, along with fines linked to revenue.
On the 12th, the Addiction Forum, an incorporated association, held an online webinar on “The International Landscape of Social Media Regulation and Directions for Its Introduction in Korea” to discuss overseas responses to social media addiction and directions for domestic legislation and policy.
In the United States, significant rulings and large settlements in lawsuits seeking damages from social media platform companies have followed one after another. Australia, the EU, and the UK are also rapidly introducing policies to regulate children’s and adolescents’ use of social media. The webinar was chaired by Lee Hae-guk, executive director of the Addiction Forum and a professor at the Catholic University of Korea Uijeongbu St. Mary’s Hospital. Dr. Sung Uk-je of the Korea Information Society Development Institute gave a presentation, and Kim Hyun-soo, a professor of psychiatry at Myongji Hospital and co-head of Gyeonggi Province’s Phone Free School initiative, served as a discussant.


Dr. Sung said social media was no longer a networking service that connects people, but had become a media platform where children constantly consume content. He added that platforms reap the profits, while the state, schools, hospitals, and families bear the full burden of social costs such as depression, anxiety, self-harm, sleep deprivation, and family conflict, criticizing the externalization of those costs.
On domestic legislative developments, he pointed out that the nine bills introduced were fragmented across age restrictions, designation-based regulation, and risk assessments, and that there was no combined bill to bring them together comprehensively. He also criticized a system that focuses only on recommendation algorithms while leaving out interface design, and in which parental consent alone can neutralize regulation.
Dr. Sung proposed the following policy alternatives: minimum age restrictions and effective age verification that minimizes the collection of personal information; removing addictive design at both the recommendation and interface levels and prohibiting exemptions based on parental consent; and making risk assessments mandatory while establishing a common assessment framework.
He said that penalties under current bills, which reach a maximum of around 30 million won, should be strengthened through fines linked to revenue. He also called for whole-of-government cooperation among relevant ministries, including the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, the Korea Media and Communications Commission (KMCC), the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Science and ICT. Dr. Sung stressed that media literacy and treatment are important, but that now is the time to hold platforms, which bear fundamental responsibility, firmly accountable rather than dismissing the issue as “everyone’s responsibility.”

Professor Kim said it was urgent to build a domestic evidence base and foster public consensus to ensure effective regulation. He said that Meta Korea and others “say they will respond based on data from our country, not U.S. policy,” adding that “there is far too little longitudinal and qualitative data showing whether domestic adolescents’ social media use is associated with self-harm, suicide attempts, school attendance, and other factors.” He noted that “in Australia, 77% of the public supported the bill following the death of a young person, but support among parents in Korea is not yet strong.”
Along with strengthening platform accountability, Professor Kim proposed a national system for monitoring harm and guaranteed data access for researchers; prioritizing protection for vulnerable children based on risk factors; including treatment and recovery systems and funding in regulatory legislation; expanding alternative play spaces in schools and communities; and ensuring the participation of children and adolescents themselves and establishing an independent oversight body.
He said that treatment costs are also discussed in U.S. lawsuits, while there is almost no discussion of treatment systems in Korea, and urged that “platform companies should create funding for treatment, and we should discuss from the outset how to use it effectively.”
Participants agreed that responsibility for children’s and adolescents’ online safety should shift from individuals and families to platforms, and that regulation should move to an “integrated risk-management model.” They also agreed that now was the right time, with multiple bills introduced and a “policy window” opened.
 


[email protected] Jeong Myeong-jin, Medical Correspondent Reporter