Mental health organisations ReachOut, Beyond Blue and Black Dog Institute are calling for a range of evidence-based measures to help improve the safety of social media platforms for young people, including verification of mental health information and limiting infinite scroll features.
In a submission to the Joint Select Committee on Social Media and Australian Society, the three organisations set out a range of recommendations including: co-designed policy measures, policies that compel social media platforms to work according to safety-by-design principles, transparency and user-control when it comes to algorithms, verification of health content on platforms and funding for more research into the links between social media and mental health.
Beyond Blue CEO Georgie Harman said, “We need to continue to equip people – young people, their parents and carers and social media users in general – with the skills and knowledge they need to feel safe in their online environments. But the onus can’t be on users alone,” Ms Harman said.
“The social media companies need to step up and play their part because people are telling us quite clearly they don’t like getting caught up doomscrolling and they want a say in what content is served up to them.
So our question is ‘what are social media platforms going to do to address this?’”