As we near the close of 2024, BITE is wrapping up the top 10 moments of the past year and what learnings marketers can take with them into the new year. At Number 7 social media’s reckoning has left brands with much to consider.

“We must make trust and safety a priority, and get ahead of harm, rather than react to crisis,” the words of Lord Michael Grade, Chair of Ofcom speaking back in February at the industry’s flagship LEAD conference ring truer than ever. 2024 has been a year when social media giants have been in the spotlight for misinformation, questionable child-safety policies and continued challenges surrounding brand safety.

With Elon Musk at the helm, X (née Twitter) has been making headlines where it once the social media platform was the place to discuss them. In the wake of the US election, Musk’s cosiness to Trump has shone a bright light on the biases that exist within privately owned social media platforms. Platforms that many audiences see as their own, are places where the impact of the  echo chamber can be extreme. On November 6th, X experienced its largest user exodus since Musk purchased the platform.

Since Musk acquired the platform back in 2022, brands have been forced to face the question of brand safety. With the rise of far-right conspiracy theories and racist content on the platform, research from Kantar has confirmed just 4% of brands believe X is a brand safe environment.  The Guardian, Balenciaga and the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol have all left the platform.

Widespread mistrust

While X dominates headlines, it is not the only social media platform that has been subject to scrutiny in 2024. TikTok continues to fight against bans in the US, and yet, while the app is banned on government devices, it played a pivotal role in reaching young voters both in the US and UK elections. A fact that is particularly worrying, considering the BBC reports TikTok users were being fed misleading election news.

According to Ofcom, TikTok was the fastest-growing source of news in the UK for the second year in a row in 2023 and one in 10 teenagers say it is their most important news source. With AI-generated content and bots flooding the app with misleading political content, TikTok has been forced to invest in countering the misinformation and adding fact-checking resources with the help of AI-labelling technology.

Calls to protect young people

The recent news that Australia is banning social media for under 16s has sparked conversation around protecting young people online. In the UK, 90% of 13-24 year olds are on Snapchat. In 2024 young people are growing up in a world where a large portion of our lives are lived online and parents are calling for better protection for their children.

This year, both Snapchat and Instagram launched new child safety protection measures. Instagram launched ‘teen accounts’ in the UK, US, Canada and Australia where users aged 13 to 15 will only be able to adjust their settings by adding a parent or guardian to their account. The platform has released a range of resources to encourage conversations around safety online and developed more than 50 tools to make the Instagram experience safer. Similarly, Snapchat is encouraging parents to sign up to their app and connect their profiles to their teens, offering a mirrored view of the profile to gain better knowledge of who their child is communicating with. The platform is striving to show that it is committed to enhancing real world connections and showing that safety and responsibility is top of mind.

While safety features give adults insight into what their teens are doing online, these features do little to combat the mental health pressures and unrealistic beauty standards that social media has been pivotal in perpetuating. While TikTok is making attempts to implement AI to block the use of beauty filters that make eyes bigger, plump lips and smooth or change skin tones for under 18s, the rise of the smartphone free childhood proves that many would argue the only way to keep children safe is to keep them offline.

2024 proved that social media has a profound real-world impact. With our online and offline lives now fully entwined, mounting pressure on platforms to prioritise users' mental health and wellbeing has hit a peak.