Meta calls on Google, Apple to better protect Korea's teens

Priyanka Bhalla, Meta’s head of safety policy in the Asia-Pacific region, called on app store operators such as Google and Apple to support efforts to protect teens online at a roundtable regarding online best practices for teenagers.

Priyanka Bhalla, Meta’s head of safety policy for the Asia-Pacific region, explains "Teens Accounts" during a Meta-hosted youth safety roundtable at the company's offices in southern Seoul on Tuesday. [YONHAP]

Priyanka Bhalla, Meta’s head of safety policy in the Asia-Pacific region, called on app store operators such as Google and Apple to support efforts to protect teens online at a roundtable regarding online best practices for teenagers at Meta's offices in southern Seoul.

“Teens use over 40 different apps, and for a parent to give consent app by app is extremely problematic and takes a ton of time,” she said at the youth safety roundtable event on Tuesdayl. “One industry solution to that is [to] give consent when teens set up [accounts] at the app store one time, and then companies, such as Apple and Google, are able to send us signals about the age of the teen so that we are able to provide a more age appropriate environment.”

Meta also announced Monday that it would use a new proprietary software feature called “adult classifier” to identify minors who try to fake their age, as Bloomberg reported. The company claims that the software will use elements of a user's profile including their interests, followed content, facial characteristics and other activity on the platform to catch fakers. Those suspected of being younger than 18 will automatically be converted to teen accounts. Meta Korea’s upcoming “Teen Accounts” policy — already implemented in the United States, arriving in the European Union later this year, and slated for a slow rollout across the globe beginning in January. The latest measure automatically turns the accounts of minors private to protect them from viewing harmful content, among other restrictions on their social media usage.

Parents, Bhalla highlighted at the roundtable, can use a supervision function to manage their children’s accounts; they are able to set daily time limits or block them from using Instagram for specific time periods as well as view who their children message, albeit not the subjects of their messages or other content they view.

Earlier the same day, Korea's privacy regulator fined Meta 21.61 billion won ($15.68 million) for leaking the personal information about its users without their consent. The Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) said Meta had collected such information about 980,000 users located in Korea via their Facebook profiles and handed it over to advertisers between July 2018 and March 2022.

“When we have access to the full written decision, we will take the time to consider it,” a Meta Korea spokesperson said.

BY LEE JAE-LIM [lee.jaelim@joongang.co.kr]