Social media is awful but the UK under-16 ban won't solve anything: 'Instead of punishing children, the government needs to target the source'
Following in the footsteps of our friends in Australia, the British government is getting ready to ban under-16s from accessing social media—specifically Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, X and Facebook. The ban is expected to be enforced by spring 2027.
"Social media is making children unhappy, it’s making it easier for bullies to harass and abuse them, and it could even be harming their mental health," Prime Minister Keir Starmer said during the announcement of the ban.
As extremely online former teenagers ourselves, some of whom are now parents, we've got some thoughts on the ban.
Fraser Brown, Online Editor
I stopped using social media several years ago. I kicked Facebook to the curb after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and I got out of Twitter when it refused to take action against Trump's deployment of misinformation and fascist propaganda, before it was purchased by Musk. I will occasionally use Linkedin and YouTube for work, but that's it.
Kids aren't to blame for the tragic state of affairs the country now finds itself in.
Fraser Brown
Social media is a curse. Rather than being a tool for sharing information and uniting disparate people across the globe, it's just found new ways to divide us, radicalising children and adults alike. Social media tramples on the truth and makes everyone using it dangerously stupid. I am not a fan.
But the British government's solution is not going to work. Children are among social media's most vulnerable, malleable users, but we keep seeing how it's used to indoctrinate adults just as effectively. During the Brexit campaign, it was adults being targeted by political lies, not children. Kids aren't to blame for the tragic state of affairs the country now finds itself in.
Instead of punishing children, the government needs to target the source. People like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. The rich assholes who think they are untouchable need to start paying for the damage they cause. These companies need to be bled dry. Social media will never improve unless they are forced to dramatically change how they work, and the only way to do that is by fining them into oblivion if they don't.
Harvey Randall, Staff Writer
"Think of the children!" one might cry in response to the idea that the UK's incoming social media ban for under-16s—or indeed the catastrophically boneheaded, hobby forum-snuffing, privacy-violating Online Safety Act—is ill-advised. The issue is, absolutely no-one involved is actually doing that.
Children are smarter than you give them credit for. They're more technologically literate than the adults in the room, too. All legislation like this does is push them to shadier sites where they're out of sight, out of mind, and far more vulnerable than a properly-moderated social media website or an actually-informed parent population would make them.
The reason social media is rotten for kids is because it's rotten for everybody.
Harvey Randall
The issue is enforcement, something the UK government has given me absolutely zero faith it'll be able to do sensibly or with any actual understanding of how this shit works. Mark me: They will mess it up. It'll be easy to get around. They'll do embarrassing news interviews where they try to tether adults verifying their age with the safety of children, and it'll be exactly as condescending now as it was back then.
And look: I don't think social media's good for our brains, it's why I barely use it, but cutting under-16s off from a world they are right to be disenfranchised by doesn't smack me as a great way to make them feel more connected to it. We used to tell kids to be careful online, now we're asking everybody to open their mouth for the camera so Palantir can know what our teeth look like. For the children, of course. For the children.
The reason social media is rotten for kids is because it's rotten for everybody. We've sat idly by while tech giants have made a torment nexus of misinformation and division that's literally built to make you angry and scared and tired—and we could do something about that, sure, but we aren't. And we're shocked that under-16s are a little messed up? We're the example we're setting for them, and we're doing a terrible job of behaving ourselves.
Rory Norris, Guides Writer
You'd be naive to underestimate the potential negative effects of various social media on children and young adults—hell, even full adults, as Fraser rightly points out. Still, a full-on ban and curfews aren't a nuanced solution to a nuanced situation.
I'm not a regular user of most social media. I don't care for Facebook. I use Instagram to chat with friends. I mainly use X for work. But YouTube, which I don't necessarily consider a social media in the same vein, is a substantial part of my day.
I wouldn't be where I am or who I am without it. My interest in media, specifically games, was fuelled by watching let's plays years ago, and now video essays—how else am I supposed to learn how the rivers work in Skyrim? This can lead to careers, as it has for me, or (to name a few) creators like MrRolfWaffles (who has spoken on the topic) and Kane Parsons, who was 16 years old when he created The Backrooms for his YouTube channel, Kane Pixels. Now 20, Parsons has become the youngest director in history to get a number one film at the box office.
I wouldn't be where I am or who I am without it.
Rory Norris
This touches on a very important aspect of the platform. YouTube is, in many ways, an educational tool. Sure, there are plenty of bad apples, but I'd argue this is something the platform should be pressured into controlling and providing people with more rigorous controls over their algorithms, rather than a government crackdown.
I grew up watching VSauce's science videos. I remember using YouTube to revise for my GCSE and A-level exams. For one reason or another, I don't think I'd have managed without it growing up. This generation will be forced to.
Dave James, Hardware Dad
Control and regulation has failed, so the UK government is attempting the last desperate thing left to it, an almost impossible-to-enforce ban on social media for the under-16s. And honestly I'm a little conflicted. I disengaged with social media a decade ago, and will be passing my feelings on to my kids as they grow up. Though I will need to prepare for the inevitable desire to rebel against me.
This proposed ban, alongside the Online Safety Act, relies heavily on third-party age verification outfits, and that means you are giving a whole bunch of different people the keys to your personal details. And that means a lot of points of failure and opportunities for bad actors to get in-between and make off with a ton of sensitive, and powerful information, such as your image and passport information.
There are better ways to do this age verification stuff, such as zero knowledge proofs (ZKP). As Jacob spoke about in his piece on age verification's privacy nightmare last year, ZKP is a cryptographic method of providing proof of something without actually handing over specific data in that transaction. The idea is that you hold onto all your data on your device, and then that generates a proof token for the places that need it.
There are better ways to do this age verification stuff.
Dave James
Basically, I feel it needs to be implemented in a more considered way.
OK, but that's actually just how it will impact those trying to navigate the restrictions they will now need to bypass to access their social media accounts, but what about the children? I'm a dad of a couple of young boys, both inevitably very tech literate for their age given what I do, but also both kept very much at arm's length from anything actually online.
Is this ban really going to keep them from finding a place or platform online where their friends are all gathering? No, probably not. But it's my job as their dad to explain the dangers of both and hope I can raise them to be smart and sensitive enough to understand why there is a need to step up and take the social media companies to task. They will find other digital playgrounds, and they will need to be just as prepared for the dangers there, too. As there's no proposed restriction in place for Signal or Whatsapp there will still be easy access to cyberbullying for everyone.
So, I guess my take is that this ban doesn't really change anything at all. In my role as a father of young kids, it is still my responsibility to make sure they're given all the information they need to make sure they can stay safe online and can understand where the dangers lie in the different platforms they may or may not interact with. As it was when they could freely access social media without being asked to hand over valuable private information to potentially unregulated age verification outfits.
Elie Gould, Staff Writer
Bans like this don't work. Take the similar restriction levied in Australia for example: research states that over 60% of teenagers are still using social media. This should surprise no one, not when the workarounds are just so easy.
As someone who grew up in the early days of the internet I know all too well just how easy it is to bypass restrictions. I also know that when kids are backed into a corner, they'll go to any lengths to do whatever they want; this rebellion will often land them on sites which are considerably worse than those they would initially browse.
Bans like this don't work.
Elie Gould
But again it shouldn't really come as a surprise to anyone that this ban likely won't make kids safer. It's just not what it's meant to do. The onus should be on the platform to regulate and restrict harmful content, and platforms should be heavily penalised for not policing themselves effectively, and the billionaires who profit off it should be forced to cough up some of the money they made from selling this addictive substance. But this ban shifts the responsibility. Now platforms can point their finger at children and parents who simply don't know better and blame them when their child inevitably encounters egregious content.
Let me be clear, I don't think children should be on social media; I don't think anyone should. Sure, those cat videos are funny, but not when it comes at the cost of rewiring the dopamine centre of your brain. But this ban is insincere in its aims, lets platforms off the hook, and will likely only make protecting children harder.
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