She wanted a safer social-media platform for her kids — so she made her own

Natalie Boll was swell versed in societal media due to her vocation in shoot and tv, yet the Vancouver parent was still shocked at what kids face when her teen daughter experienced cyberbullying after getting her first phone. 

"My first reaction was just 'Let's go offline... And I deleted everything for me and my daughter at the time," recalled the mom of three.

Boll vowed to find a middle ground, however, after she discovered the decision isolating for herself — losing contacts she'd built over 15 years, she noted — and for her eldest child, who felt unable to connect with friends the way she wanted to.

"I realized it shouldn't be between these platforms that have harmful content, addictive algorithms, performance metrics, these kind of overstimulating feeds" — or complete withdrawl, she said. 

Social media has been in the hot seat lately, with multiple governments aiming to follow Australia's recent ban on social media for those under 16 and a trial against Meta proceeding in New Mexico, in which the state accuses the Instagram and Facebook-parent company of creating an online space where children are targeted for sexual exploitation and of knowing but failing  to disclose the harms young people face on its platforms.

While Canada also has a vocal contingent urging a social media ban for younger users, others are calling for a more nuanced approach.

Mom creates app to make social media better for kids

Working with advisors from Oxford University, Boll has launched Tribela, an alternative social media platform that aims to strike a balance between "digital detox and doomscrolling" by prioritizing user safety and well-being. 

Social platforms are designed for adults, according to Boll, and safety features are then retrofitted for younger users. With Tribela, she began with "safety-by design-protocols."

What does that mean? Automatic content moderation blocks foul language, violent and sexually explicit content, she explained, and users choose what appears on their feeds themselves. It also means no auto-playing videos, endless scrolling, "likes" or follower counts.

"We don't want them on as long as possible. We wanted to create a space where you could come connect with your friends, watch some engaging content and then go live life," Boll said.

Former Ontario Crown attorney Margot Denommé appreciates Tribela taking a preventive approach by directly addressing issues people struggle with when navigating unregulated social media, which she says "is simply not safe."

Denommé, who's written books about digital safety and served as a consultant for Tribela, usually encourages parents to delay having kids join social media "for as long as humanly possible" to get back to play-based childhoods.

"But when they deem it's appropriate for their child to go online, I strongly urge them to look at Tribela as an alternative versus trying to navigate parent controls that we hear time and time again simply don't work," she said from Toronto.

The prospect of having safety-minded social media alternatives is great news, but an age-restriction is still needed, according to Robin Sherk, a parent advocate with Unplugged Canada.

The national non-profit group supports social media age minimums and delaying smartphones, because these are the platforms and devices kids today are already using.

"It's really exciting that there's a new solution looking to make a healthier social space — once kids are ready for those encounters," Sherk said from Ottawa, where she was meeting with federal politicians to discuss online safety.

"But that's just not what we're facing right now."

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Matt Hatfield, executive director of digital rights group Open Media, welcomes newer social platforms — along with Tribela, there's another Canadian initiative called Gander Social — that are creating more intentionally designed online spaces where people can gather.

"A core problem with how online spaces work right now is everyone is in the same room at all times, [like] being in a bar and a comedy show and a church and a policy shop," he said. "And we don't do that with other real-world spaces."  

Hatfield does foresee the "network effect" — a platform's value based on number of users — potentially being a challenge for the newcomers. "If you're the only one in town who has a telephone … it might not be a very useful device because you just can't connect to many people through it." 

Though Canada's last attempt at online harms legislation died when the last federal election was called, he hopes to see a reintroduced version this spring, given what Hatfield says were "more complex, but targeted solutions" for dealing with online safety, developed through cross-country consultations.

The earlier bill was "aimed at making online platforms have a duty of care, to think about how the structure of their networks will affect their users and to take reasonable steps to reduce the exposure of those users to the most severe illegal online content," Hatfield explained from Vancouver. 

It's dangerous to give kids and younger teens unrestricted access to social media platforms because they, "don't necessarily know right from wrong at that age," said Angelina Dinh, the daughter of Tribela founder Boll, who's been helping her mom develop the platform.

The harmful online atmosphere the 19-year-old university student based in London, Ont., recalls from her younger days included hateful anonymous comments and a constant push around what to do "to be more beautiful or look more like a certain person."

"It's just not a healthy environment," Dinh said. "You grow up either feeling really negatively about yourself or projecting really negative things onto other people." 

While Dinh believes social media can hurt young people's mental health, she says kids can also be harmed if they're blocked from the spaces where they seek connection and entertainment.

She noted that when she was younger, she didn't want to get off social media — even though she knew it was negatively impacting her life — "because everyone's on it."

"We should also negotiate with platforms to be responsible and put way more emphasis on that, because as much as we want to tell 12- to 17-year-olds, 'You have to be better on your phone,' they're still developing."

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