A year later: is the tide finally turning on Big Tech?

A lot has happened in a year. The landscape has changed considerably from where we were 12 months ago.

A year ago, it really felt as though we were pushing shit up a hill. There was a sense that this was simply how things were going to be: social media would continue to expand into our lives, our children would continue to be exposed to it, and there was very little anyone could do because Big Tech was simply too powerful to challenge.

But that is beginning to change.

In January 2026, in California, a young woman whose name we do not know took on some of the biggest technology companies in the world. Meta, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube were among the companies involved. Most settled out of court, while Meta proceeded to trial.

The fact that these cases were able to proceed at all was significant. There is a compelling documentary about the legal process and the lawyers who created a way for families to challenge Big Tech over allegations that its products contributed to serious harm to their children.

For many years, Section 230 in the United States has provided significant legal protections to technology platforms, contributing to a perception that these companies were largely untouchable in ways that manufacturers of physical products were not.

The lawyers challenged that position, and a judge determined that there was a case to be heard. Watching the process is compelling because there is such confidence from Meta’s lawyers in the protections they believe Section 230 provides.

Once the case was allowed to proceed, something extremely important happened: discovery.

Discovery is the legal process through which parties can request internal documents, emails and other information relevant to a case. Through this process, internal research and communications relating to the effects of social media platforms on young people’s mental health and wellbeing became part of the evidence being examined.

This is particularly important because it raises questions not simply about whether these platforms can cause harm, but about what companies themselves knew about those harms, when they knew it, and what they did with that knowledge.

There have also been allegations that engagement and advertising systems could capitalise on young people’s vulnerabilities. For example, if a girl was engaging with more depressive or appearance-related content, the platform could continue feeding her material and advertising related to beauty and self-image. The concern is that systems designed to maximise engagement may reinforce the very vulnerabilities that are affecting a young person in the first place.

There were teams within these companies tasked with considering the safety and wellbeing of young people and recommending adaptations and changes. Whistleblowers and internal documents have subsequently raised serious questions about how much influence those safety concerns had when they came into conflict with commercial priorities.

Further court cases have continued to put these issues under scrutiny, alongside settlements and proposed changes to algorithms, age restrictions and other safety measures.

However, this raises another important question for countries such as New Zealand.

If technology companies introduce stronger protections in response to legal or regulatory pressure in the United States, why should children elsewhere receive a lower standard of protection?

This is also why I am sceptical of the argument that we do not need age restrictions for children and should instead rely on technology companies to regulate themselves more effectively.

The evidence of the past two decades gives us very little reason to believe that voluntary self-regulation alone will be enough. Again and again, commercial incentives have competed with safety considerations. At some point, we have to ask whether digital products used by millions of children should be subjected to safety expectations comparable to those we apply to physical products.

What these developments also show, however, is that we do have some power.

Collective action can change things.

One of the issues we also need to address is adult dependence on our phones, alongside the broader levels of overwhelm and exhaustion within the adult population. I think this has made us less able to stand up for what we know to be true and, perhaps more importantly, to actually live in ways that model what we know is healthier for our children.

There is another change happening alongside the debate about social media, and that is a growing willingness to question the role of technology in education.

One of the books that has had a significant impact on my thinking this year is The Digital Delusion. I think this is a potentially seminal book and may come to be regarded alongside Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation in the wider debate about children, technology and development.

One of its central challenges is to the assumption that more technology in education automatically means better or more innovative education.

After around two decades of EdTech being promoted as the inevitable future of learning, we now have an opportunity to examine more critically what has actually worked, what has not, and what may have been lost in the process.

The message for me is not that all technology is inherently bad. It is that we need to pull back considerably from the assumption that technology should automatically be the default educational tool.

And perhaps that is where we are beginning to arrive more broadly with technology.

The question is no longer simply, What can this technology do?

We are starting to ask better questions.

What is it doing to us? What is it doing to our children? What is it costing us? And is that a cost we are willing to accept?

A year ago, I wasn’t particularly optimistic. Big Tech felt too big, the direction of travel felt inevitable, and those of us raising concerns often felt like we were pushing against something unstoppable.

A year later, I feel differently.

Court cases are being heard and big tech Meta have been found guilty. Internal evidence is being scrutinised. Governments are discussing age restrictions and regulation. Parents and educators are asking harder questions about social media and EdTech.

There is a long way to go, but something has shifted.

It feels as though the tide has really started to turn.