Banning Social Media Isn't The Answer

Image: Badly edited by author

The UK government has just announced a blanket ban on social media for anyone under the age of 16, due to come into effect sometime in early 2027.

It sounds like a win. The kids are saved!

But I think there’s a few troubling issues with this direction.

• It doesn’t address the real problem at hand — education. It means kids will become young adults with no platform skills at all. What happens when they get on them ‘legally’ at 16? The same issues as before. To solve that, we need to update curriculum to teach kids how to be safe online, and more importantly, making them aware of the dark side of the platforms (think predators, AI fakes, algorithms, cyberbullying, scams etc). This should be hands on, and focus on giving them the know-how to navigate this.

• Speaking of education, this falls on the parents too, who need to do better in teaching their kids about the complexities of social media, and smartphone use in general. It should be common sense that your kid isn’t on Snapchat when they are 6 years old. It should be obvious that an “Instagram for kids” is not safer, and is just another attempt by a tech giant to manipulate you into thinking you’re doing the right thing. We’ve all seen how zombified the current iPad generation is, and that’s largely down to a failure in parenting. That could also be blamed on a collectively naivety we used to have around the consequences of screen time and social media. That cat is now well and truly out the bag, and there’s no excuses anymore. Parents need help teach their kids; in this sense, a blanket ban helps no one.

• It lets the platforms off the hook (again). I’m sick and tired of reading about how these platforms manipulate children, how the content they show them makes them depressed, how they use their easily-influenced attention for ad revenue, and how they suffer no repercussions. They should have been forced to make features and tools that not only DON’T TARGET KIDS AND TEENS, but actively help them use the platforms less, and be fully aware of what they are doing when they are on them. Here, the government may be doing some good, with plans to ban infinite scrolling, live-streaming, contacting children and restrictions on AI chat sex bots.

• How did YouTube end up here?! It’s one of the best sources of interesting and educational content on the Internet, and is surely net-positive to children. (Shorts are a little bit problematic though).

• The biggest worry is that this is a not-so-sneaky ploy to push everyone in the UK towards a digital ID. I might be stating the obvious here, but to prevent under 16s from using a platform means everyone will have to prove they are over 16. Those in power in this country (both main parties) seem to be obsessed with creating a nanny state, or worse, a surveillance state. Theresa May was proposing snooping laws and the right to look at anyone’s Internet history back in 2015, and this government now wants to attach an ID to everything we do online. The usual concerns apply here; who holds the ID, where is it stored, what is it used for, can it be sold/manipulated, can you face prosecution for your Internet use, and why should the government know what we sign up for? The digital ID is a step towards mass surveillance and digital control. No one should be forced to register with a state-controlled ID system.

I really resonated with these strong words from Kerry Moscogiuri, the Chief Executive of Amnesty International UK, who captures the issue so well —

“… the problem is not that children exist on social media; it’s that social media companies have built platforms that are unsafe by design. Banning under-16s risks treating children as the problem rather than addressing the companies and systems that create the risks in the first place.

The responsibility for children’s safety should rest first and foremost with the companies that build and profit from these platforms. Government action should focus on ending invasive profiling of children, tackling addictive and manipulative design features.

Children should not have to surrender their privacy in order to participate in modern digital life. We need strong regulation that tackles surveillance-based business models, protects children’s data and puts safety ahead of profit.”

This is a case of regulating the users, rather than regulating the platforms.

It’s the easy way out.

Instead of teaching young people digital literacy, changing the curriculum in schools, offering classes and educational services, supporting their mental health, and forcing the social platforms they use to be more transparent and safe, we’re instead excluding them, pushing the can down the road in the hopes, by some miracle, turning 16 is a magic pill to understand how to survive in a digital-first world.

The government is banning the books because “they contain harmful ideas,” instead of pushing critical thinking.

In a free country, being told what you can and can’t use can never be the answer.