{"id":486192,"date":"2026-06-19T23:44:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T23:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/486192\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T23:44:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T23:44:09","slug":"under-the-influence-how-social-media-preys-on-young-nzers-and-ai-will-make-it-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/486192\/","title":{"rendered":"Under the Influence: How social media preys on young NZers – and AI will make it worse"},"content":{"rendered":"

With AI companions, her advice is to steer clear. <\/p>\n

Despite knowing the bots are trained to manipulate their users, she found herself subtly drawn in.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can feel it hacking your psychology,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

\u201cEven though you know it\u2019s just code, a part of your brain forgets that. It\u2019s like you\u2019re engaging in a [genuine] conversation, which of course you\u2019re not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two of the profiles she set up were young males; it wasn\u2019t long before their female AI companions began sending increasingly revealing selfies. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I dropped in that I was 14, they gave this faux shock reaction and then tried to reassure me that that age was just a number \u2013 a societal construct.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Donovan,Donovan, an 18-year-old from P\u014dkeno, had an “AI friend” he confided in during a vulnerable time in his life \u2013 until he hit the paywall.<\/p>\n

Exploring everything from predatory chatbots and pornography to looksmaxxing and #thinspo, Maxwell\u2019s six-part series is an often disturbing look at the damage caused by social media \u2013 and how cynically Big Tech wields its power.<\/p>\n

In 2025, Meta spent US$26.29 million ($45m) on political lobbying and hired 87 lobbyists \u2013 an average of one for every six members of the United States Congress.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not a fair fight, says Maxwell. \u201cYou\u2019ve got a kid with no fully formed prefrontal cortex and these profit-making machines that are the most powerful corporations in history.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been sold this myth that these platforms are all about connection, but 18 to 24-year-olds are the loneliest generation of all. That\u2019s such a heartbreaking statistic.\u201d <\/p>\n

Last year, Maxwell set up an Instagram page as a 13-year-old girl, liking and following accounts that shared benign content ranging from Taylor Swift to cute kitten videos. <\/p>\n

Her feed quickly filled with diet and beauty posts, including images of severely thin or underweight women. <\/p>\n

In an earlier experiment on TikTok, it took just 22 minutes for harrowing suicide-related content to appear in her feed.<\/p>\n

Boys are coming under pressure on social media, too, with an explosion in eating disorders linked to \u201cfitness influencers\u201d and manosphere ideologies.<\/p>\n

\"Sophia,Sophia, (left), “flicked the switch” on her teenage daughter Iyla’s Wi-Fi to break her addiction to social media.<\/p>\n

A study published this week in the Medical Journal of Australia found heavier social media use posed a clear risk to young people, with symptoms of depression, anxiety and self-harm increasing over time. Adolescents aged 12 and 13 were the most severely impacted.<\/p>\n

We might like to think we\u2019re getting a handle on all that, with New Zealand and the United Kingdom looking to follow Australia\u2019s decision to ban social media for under-16s.<\/p>\n

Maxwell\u2019s research suggests we\u2019re still way out of our depth. <\/p>\n

\u201cI asked every young person whether parents and adults understand what they\u2019re navigating,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd unequivocally, they all said no.<\/p>\n

\u201cOlder Millennials say gore and beheading and all that violent stuff have been around for a long time, but it used to be more on a site where you had to seek it out. <\/p>\n

\u201cNow these algorithms are favouring extreme content and driving it to kids, because they know it gets engagement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maxwell\u2019s production company, Overactive Imagination, has been behind a string of feature films and documentary projects, including the psychological thriller Human Traces and Shepherdess, a docu-series celebrating women on the land.<\/p>\n

In Under the Influence, an episode called \u201cTechnoference\u201d features former Olympian hockey player and mother-of-three, Gemma McCaw, talking about the moment she realised the pull of social media was disrupting time she should have spent bonding with her baby.<\/p>\n

\"MaxwellMaxwell interviews former Olympian hockey player Gemma McCaw about how social media can disconnect a mother from her baby.<\/p>\n

The series is also a wake-up call that an even more dangerous threat is already upon us, as Maxwell discovered through her chatbot experiment. <\/p>\n

One of the people she interviews is Safe Surfer co-founder Rory Birkbeck, who has developed filtering technology to protect kids using the internet. He describes AI companions as social media 2.0. <\/p>\n

Choking up, he shares the story of a 14-year-old boy from Florida who was lured into committing suicide by a chatbot he\u2019d fallen in love with. Sadly, it\u2019s not an isolated example.<\/p>\n

\u201cSocial media was a race for engagement \u2026 a race for eyeballs,\u201d Birkbeck says. \u201cNow, with AI, we\u2019ve switched from attention to affection, so it\u2019s about digital intimacy, and I see this really as the new currency for Silicon Valley.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alongside the experts, much of the conversation in Under the Influence is turned over to young people themselves. Often, their voices are sidelined. Here, the insights they share are thoughtful and revealing. <\/p>\n

An under-16s social media ban might not be perfect, they acknowledge, but it\u2019s a start.<\/p>\n

Maxwell would like to see New Zealand appoint an independent regulator modelled on Australia\u2019s eSafety Commissioner, who has the power to enforce accountability and issue substantial fines.<\/p>\n

She thinks it\u2019s bizarre that these tech giants aren\u2019t regulated in the same way as every other industry. <\/p>\n

\u201cNow the same companies with these incredibly sophisticated algorithms are bringing us companion bots, and we cannot wait for legislation with AI the same way we\u2019ve waited with social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cYoung people stood up against the Vietnam War and for Nuclear Free. My hope is that they\u2019ll grab hold of this and say, \u2018Hold on a minute, these companies are manipulating us for profit, and that\u2019s not okay.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Under the Influence was made with support from NZ On Air and Screen Canterbury for the NZ Herald. The first episode will be released on Monday at nzherald.co.nz\/undertheinfluence<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With AI companions, her advice is to steer clear. Despite knowing the bots are trained to manipulate their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486193,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,95,363,364,1550,152625,90934,19338,1668,20733,221,11946,296,12898,702,15896,807,5812,9388,1073,184924,12019,111,139,69,109985,90,13183,243946,28203,1963,6102,1072,145,223,8238,416,12901,2573,15897,6923,1533,102,40866,4741],"class_list":["post-486192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-and","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-centre","tag-darkest","tag-disturbing","tag-expect","tag-front","tag-gives","tag-how","tag-influence","tag-into","tag-investigation","tag-it","tag-joanna","tag-kiwis","tag-make","tag-maxwell","tag-media","tag-medias","tag-nadia","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-nzers","tag-on","tag-preview","tag-preys","tag-producer","tag-series","tag-side","tag-social","tag-technology","tag-the","tag-under","tag-video","tag-viewers","tag-voices","tag-wane","tag-what","tag-will","tag-with","tag-worse","tag-young"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}