Is under-16s social media ban missing the point?

Keir Starmer is facing mounting calls from across the political spectrum to follow Australia’s lead in banning children under the age of 16 from social media. The government has announced a consultation and the prime minister has said he is open to the idea of social-media curbs for younger teens, but he would prefer to see the results of Australia’s ban before making up his mind.

On Sunday, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch declared that a Tory government would impose age limits on social media platforms. Since then, more than 60 Labour MPs have written to Starmer urging him to follow suit. But many experts argue that a social media ban would be ineffective, impossible to implement, and target the symptoms rather than the root cause of the problem.

What did the commentators say?

“Every parent worries desperately about online risks, and they are entirely right to do so,” said Ian Russell, whose daughter Molly took her own life after being exposed to online suicide content, on PoliticsHome. Calls for a ban are “entirely understandable”. But “parents and children deserve proper, evidence-based solutions”, rather than the “easy fixes” being pushed by politicians “looking to further their own political prospects”.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

“I’m hugely concerned that bans will cause more harm than good”, as bad actors “migrate to platforms not covered by bans”, while affected platforms use it “as an excuse not to clean up their act, leaving children at a cliff edge of harm” when they reach 16.

“If there’s one thing more ridiculous than taking a corporate failure and throwing it to the individual to solve”, it is doing so to under-16s, said Zoe Williams in The Guardian. Online harm “is not for the 12-year-old to fix by turning off their phone”. Besides, older people are just as much the target of “manipulative content”, and are, disproportionately, the “misinformation super-spreaders” on social media. “Between Gen X miscreants and hyper-credulous boomers, there are generations that pose a greater risk to, and are themselves at risk from, the informational ecosystem.”

There is also “a danger in focusing on the wrong war”, said the New Scientist’s editorial board. While politicians focus on social media, they “rush to embrace AI”. This is the technology that will have “the largest effect on today’s teens”.

A ban also conveniently ignores the problems in teenagers’ offline social lives, which are as much to blame for “rising distress” as social media, said Chris Stokel-Walker in The Independent. We are “systematically shutting children out of public life”. Youth centres are closing across the UK, four in 10 councils “no longer run any youth services at all”, and libraries, “where they still exist, close early”. The other spaces “where teenagers once lingered – shopping centres, cafes, parks – are increasingly hostile territory”. For everything outside school and home, the “in between” where you form friendships and identity, there’s social media. “Banning under-16s would complete the erasure of young people from public life.”

What next?

Tomorrow, the House of Lords will debate an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill that would impose a social-media age limit within a year of the bill passing into law.

Since Australia’s ban in December, technology companies say they have deactivated or restricted access to 4.7 million social media accounts belonging to children, according to the Financial Times. But some children might be sidestepping the law by using fake accounts, and sceptics have also pointed to “a surge in downloads of alternative social media apps” not covered by the ban.

“In principle, Keir is in favour of a ban,” a Downing Street source told The Guardian. “But there are still big obstacles to overcome with implementation. We can already see that from Australia. We need to take our time and make sure we get this right.”