WhatsApp recommended Finnish children’s channels to a man’s profile — YLE News

In Finland, WhatsApp recommended channels run by children to a test profile belonging to a 35-year-old man. As YLE News reports, one in five channels recommended to this profile was run by children under the age of 13, while every third channel was run by minors. Most administrators were girls.

Children’s public channels

Journalists found hundreds of channels run by ordinary Finnish children. In more than 50 of them, the administrators were children younger than 13, although the minimum age for using WhatsApp is 13.

On the channels, children post dance videos, selfies and updates about their daily lives. Some also disclose information about places they go or personal data. WhatsApp channels allow updates to be published for a group of subscribers, but in practice they are always public: any user can view them if a channel appears in recommendations or if a person receives a link.

Data about daily life

The investigation showed that strangers can learn a great deal about children from their posts. One 12-year-old girl listed the schedule of classes at a riding school on her channel. Another, aged 13, posted a selfie on the way to school and indicated her school hours; journalists were able to determine the location of a church visible in the photo.

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Some children provided their full names and exact dates of birth, and also posted polls and questions that anyone could answer. Inka Kiuru of Save the Children Finland told YLE that children do not always understand the boundary between public and private space, and recommendation algorithms may show their everyday lives to adults who specifically seek out such content.

Reach of small channels

According to an analysis by the YLE team, WhatsApp does not recommend channels with fewer than 100 subscribers. At the same time, small channels can be accessed through direct links that children share with one another. One channel run by three 11-year-old children reached 3,600 WhatsApp users in a month despite having only 156 subscribers.

Meta, which owns WhatsApp, did not answer YLE’s questions about why children’s channels are recommended to adults. At the same time, the company said it had recently introduced new tools for parents of teenagers aged 13 to 18.