Is there a more dangerous place for a kid to spend time today than online? The prevailing wisdom tells us that social media is ruining every part of a child’s life: giving them anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia; exposing them to graphic images and misinformation; destroying their self worth, ability to socialise and respect for women and girls. For years, we ignored teenagers and their unhindered access to unregulated platforms. Now it’s become fashionably urgent, with one solution more popular than any: ban it all.
What form a ban might take divides opinion. Head teachers have called for phones to be banned in schools; some have called for a blanket social media ban – similar to one passed by the Australian government in November – for under-16s. Last week Jack Thorne, the writer behind the recent hit Netflix incel drama, Adolescence, splashily backed the Smartphone Free Childhood group: a campaign of more than 100,000 parents who have committed to withhold smartphones from their children until they are at least 14 years-old. (Keir Starmer hosted Thorne and the creators of the show at Downing Street on 31 March and, following their discussion, wrote an op-ed for the Metro stating that Adolescence would be made available to watch for free in all UK secondary schools, applauding its conclusions about the negative impacts of teen social media access.) Reports have also claimed the Starmer government is privately toying with its own law similar to that in Australia, introducing a universal ban of all platforms for younger teens.
But what do teens themselves think? The UK youth parliament – made up of 14-19 year-olds – said these various plans are neither a “practical nor effective” solutions to the growing problem of violence and misogyny among young people. They will be treated like addicts arguing their vices aren’t so bad. But the reality is that these conclusions from UK teenagers are more clear-sighted than anyone else in the debate.
If we recognise, as Starmer acknowledged in the Metro, that this is a complicated cultural problem, why then are we suggesting it will be meaningfully addressed by blunt bans up to arbitrary ages? These ages have been plucked out of thin air: there’s no evidence that there is a difference between a 14 year-old and a 16 year-old having social media access. Nor is it logical to suggest that not having a phone during school hours, but getting full access after three o’clock, would result in meaningful ideological changes. The problem of internet-driven misogyny isn’t reserved to under 18s either.
Bans also require us to suspend our disbelief that they are remotely enforceable. There’s no roadmap for platforms to restrict access to their sites and no clear consequences if they don’t. No one has explained who will be held accountable for the millions of kids who will inevitably circumvent the rules and how it might differ from the effectively non-existent penalties that already exist. (Plenty of under-13s have covert social media accounts today).
The more serious issue, though is that blanket-banning children up to a randomly-selected age addresses the symptom. It places the onus on parents and kids to mollify the consequences of algorithms designed to serve addictive and extreme content. Even if we entertain the best case scenario – one where these bans are somehow enforceable and not a single kid sees a dangerous online post before their 14th or 16th or 18th birthday – the reality is that the negative impacts of social media will still wreak havoc on the mental wellbeing of children and young adults once they do get access. These bans gift platforms an opportunity to shift blame, where they can reasonably claim they’re following the rules and any negative impacts felt by children are the fault of the adults in their lives not keeping enough of a watchful eye.
If implemented – in some form – not only will we be left with lengthy legislation, we will have also wasted time we could have spent speaking seriously about how to create airtight platform regulation. These conversations, like most conversations about how to address the societal problems created by social media, ultimately function as a salve to delude ourselves that we are doing something helpful. But by not listening to the reasonable voices of young people, we consign ourselves to kicking the can down the road, to a place where this problem will only be gnarlier; a place where it becomes even harder to tell ourselves we are actually doing anything to address it.
[See also: Capitalism (Taylor’s version)]
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