No Admission of Wrongdoing

“Papa, when will I have a mobile phone?” My 10-year-old son is waiting to be of an age where he can have his own phone. He is in such a hurry to be a grown-up, and I don’t blame him. I always reply with a few words on the pleasure of being carefree, but I can tell I haven't convinced him. And I can't blame him. It feels like only yesterday I was his age and couldn’t wait to be an adult; why should he be any different from his old man? 

Back then, before mobile phones became the hallmark of maturity, I associated adulthood with the ability to make decisions, live the consequences, and, most importantly, have a voice. I wonder if he’s in a hurry to bury his face in the screen without interruption, or if he just craves the agency to do so! I tell myself that he doesn’t yearn for the rights I dreamt of because he already has them. I pat myself on the back and say maybe I’m doing a decent job as a parent after all! Parents need it and rarely receive it.

I ask him why he wants his own phone, and he offers up a carefully curated argument about his intentions to further explore learning apps like the ones I allow him to use on his iPad with hawkish monitoring and strict time limits. I know, however, that he wouldn’t resist some unsupervised time on social apps. He learnt about them somewhere. He already knows way more than what I teach him. It’s the tax we pay when we send them out to the world to learn to be humans!

What can I tell you, son, about social media? That freakish cross-over between Las Vegas, McDonald's, and the Playboy Mansion. A once fantastic universe turned into a wasteland built on unrestrained capitalism, rampant promiscuity (sexual and otherwise), conspiracy theories and political theatre, ruled over by technofascists and geriatric policy makers trying desperately to control what they genuinely don’t understand. How can I explain that I myself take part in it all?

“You need to wait, son, until you’re mature enough. The faster you get there the sooner you may have your own phone.” I don’t define what being "mature" actually means, even when his eyes betray a degree of confusion. He has learnt to accept my elastic statements, something I intend to enjoy while it lasts. He’s intelligent enough to sense the trap embedded in our agreement, but lacks the verbal skills to flush it out. He accepts the mandatory wait, and I appreciate his patience, a quality he has and I didn’t. 

It’s no wonder that, as a father, I’m delighted about the push from regulators for children's safety on social media, however late it’s coming. The optimist in me hopes that by the time my son is of a suitable age these protections will be well in place and actually working. Parents live in an existential angst about their children as is, we didn’t need the voracious greed of tech giants added to the anxiety list. Sadly, reducing parental existential suffering is not a boardroom metric.

It should be. We now know for a fact that the major social media platforms, namely those owned by Meta, systematically engineered an opium den for the adolescent mind. Their engineers constructed invisible snares: infinite scrolls, relentless push notifications, and autoplay loops, specifically calibrated to exploit teenage neurobiology. All the while assuring parents and regulators of their commitment to safety. The adults, consumed with fears of predators and cyberbullies, never thought to question whether the platforms themselves might be the danger.

Whistleblowers have now presented documentation revealing that the platforms' own researchers had long documented the psychological toll of their product on youngsters, explicitly noting how even moderate use exacerbates body dysmorphia, anxiety, and severe depression. Executives also received warnings about the very grooming and harassment targeting minors that parents explicitly feared, but ultimately decided that maximum territory capture and ad revenue were well worth the potential human casualties.

Occasionally, when cornered, they cough up a settlement. A large sum by our standards and very moderate one by theirs, accompanied by the sentence to which we have all become immune: We do not admit to any wrongdoing.  It's a trade-off wherein the legal apparatus declares victory through dollar signs, even as the underlying moral question — whether the company intentionally compromised child safety for ad revenue — remains unanswered.

Behind the triumphant headlines and substantial payouts, these instances highlight the schism between financial restitution and true accountability. By cutting a check to settle, however large, and refusing to admit a single shred of wrongdoing, Meta converted a catastrophic moral indictment into a line item on its balance sheet.

As a parent I’m expected to accept their diametrically opposed positions: we did nothing wrong, but here is money to address the harm we don't believe we caused. If they truly refuse any responsibility, practical or otherwise, then why are they paying it in the first place? We know they put our children in harm's way, attorneys have proffered proof in the form of their own internal communications, and law-makers are introducing new regulations as a result. But they did nothing wrong. 

None of this sits well with me, nor should it with anyone else.

When a society accepts a settlement as a triumph while the perpetrator toasts to a masterclass in risk management, it exposes a profound cultural hypocrisy. It reveals an ecosystem where both sides use the exact same event to claim victory, affirming a quiet consensus: financial metrics have completely replaced moral accountability. More dangerously, the moral and immoral can peacefully co-exist in a capitalist utopia and every one celebrates.

A massive cash settlement offers an immediate, highly visible image of "success." By branding the payout as a win, the state transforms a structural failure, the inability to actually prevent harm or hold corporations accountable, into a victorious transaction. The state met its obligations to the people, and the headline became the policy, allowing public institutions to perform their duty without ever fundamentally disrupting the industry they regulate. Because the ship needs to carry on sailing at all costs.

Investors don't ask, "Did we hurt children?" They ask, "Is the uncertainty cleared from the balance sheet?" Politicians should care for the children, but not at the expense of a politically powerful industry. The solution is a bargain: public safety is negotiated as a trade-off for corporate immunity.

In the end, my son will eventually get a phone with default usage limits. The state will keep pointing to a record-breaking settlement as proof of progress. And Meta will conduct business largely as usual. In a world where financial metrics replace moral accountability, everyone gets to call it a win and parents will carry on with their existential angst.