She wanted a safe social-media platform for her kids — so she made her own
Natalie Boll was well-versed in social media due to her career in film and television, yet a Vancouver parent was still shocked by what children face when her teenage daughter experienced cyberbullying after getting her first phone.
“My first reaction was just, ‘Let’s go offline… and I deleted everything at that time for me and my daughter,'” the mother of three recalled.
However, Bol vowed to find a middle ground when she realized she had isolated herself – losing contacts she had built up over 15 years, she noted – and her eldest child, who felt unable to connect with friends the way she wanted.
He said, “I realized it shouldn’t be among these platforms that have harmful content, addictive algorithms, performance metrics, overstimulating feeds like this” — or a full refund.
Social media has been in the hot seat recently with multiMany governments are aiming to follow Australia Recent ban on social media for those under 16 years of age and a Lawsuit against Meta Actions in New MexicoState in which Accusations against Instagram and Facebook-parent company Creating an online space where children are targeted for sexual exploitation and knowing about the harm it causes to young people on its platforms, but failing to disclose it.
While there is also a vocal contingent in Canada calling for restrictions on social media for young users, others are calling for a more nuanced approach.
A Canadian mom who wanted an alternative to existing social media for kids that was safe and healthy but still fun worked with her teenage daughter to create Tribela. The app allows people to showcase their lives but does not use any matching functions or addictive algorithms.
Prioritizing user safety, well-being
Working with advisors from Oxford University, Boll has launched Tribella, an alternative social media platform that aims to strike a balance between “digital detox and doomscrolling” by prioritizing user safety and well-being.
According to Bol, social platforms are designed for adults, and then security features are retooled for younger users. He started with Tribala “Security by Design-Protocols.”
What does it mean? Automated content moderation blocks hate speech, violent and sexually explicit content, he explained, and users themselves choose what appears on their feed. This also means No auto-playing videoEndless scrolling, counting “likes” or followers.
“We don’t wantas long as you put ants on them possible. We wanted to create a place where you can connect with your friends, watch some engaging content, and then live life,” Bol said.
Former Ontario Crown lawyer Margot Denomme praised Tribella for taking a preventative approach by directly addressing the issues people struggle with when navigating unregulated social media, which she says is “just not safe.”
Denomme, who has written books about digital safety and worked as a consultant for Tribella, generally encourages parents to delay connecting to social media “as long as possible” to return children to a play-based childhood.
“But when they feel it is appropriate for their child to go online, I strongly urge them to look at Tribela as an option rather than trying to navigate parental controls, which we hear again and again don’t work,” she said from Toronto.
Age restriction still necessary: Advocate
According to Robin Sherk, parent advocate for Unplugged Canada, the possibility of having safety-minded social media alternatives is good news, but age-restrictions are still needed.
The national nonprofit group supports minimum limits and delaying smartphones in the social media age, because these are the platforms and devices kids are already using today.
“It’s really exciting that a new solution is being found to create a healthy social space — once kids are ready to have those encounters,” Sherk said from Ottawa, where she was meeting with federal politicians to discuss online safety.
“But that’s not what we’re facing right now.”
As the Liberals draft another attempt at online harm legislation, Meta Canada’s head of public policy Rachel Curran argues that requiring individual platforms to verify age would not be ‘privacy protective,’ and says Meta’s pressure on app stores to handle verification is not an attempt to put responsibility for harm on Google and Apple.
designing a different space
Matt Hatfield, executive director of digital rights group Open Media, welcomes new social platforms — along with Tribella, there’s another Canadian initiative called Gander Social — that are creating more intentionally designed online spaces where people can gather.
“One of the main problems with how the online space works right now is that everyone is in the same room all the time, (like) at a bar and a comedy show and a church and a policy shop,” he said. “And we don’t do that with other places in the real world.”
Hatfield expects that “network effects” – the value of a platform based on the number of users – will potentially be a challenge for newcomers. “If you’re the only one in town who has a telephone… it may not be a very useful tool because you can’t connect with many people through it.”
Although Canada’s last attempt at online law harms He died when the last federal election was calledThey hope to see a reintroduced version of thisAccording to Hatfield, Pring were “more complex, but targeted solutions” to tackle online security, which were developed through cross-country consultation.
The earlier bill was “aimed at”“Deads creating online platforms have a duty to think about how the structure of their networks will impact their users and take appropriate steps to reduce those users’ exposure to the most seriously illegal online content,” Hatfield explained from Vancouver.
Existing platform ‘not a healthy environment’
Angelina Dinh, daughter of Tribella founder Bol, who is helping her mother develop the platform, said it is dangerous to give children and young teens unrestricted access to social media platforms because they, “can’t necessarily distinguish between right and wrong at that age.”
A 19-year-old university student living in London, Ontario recalls her younger days in a harmful online environment that included hateful anonymous comments and Constant pressure about what to do “to become more beautiful or to look like a certain person.”
“It’s not exactly a healthy environment,” Dinh said. “You grow up either feeling really negative about yourself or projecting really negative things onto other people.”
While Dinh believes social media can harm the mental health of youth, she says children can also be harmed if they are blocked from places where they seek connection and entertainment.
She noted that when she was younger, she didn’t want to move away from social media – even though she knew it was negatively impacting her life – “because everyone is on it.”
“We must also interact with the platforms to be responsible and put 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 are still developing.”
