Britain Wants To Ban Teens From Social Media. The Evidence Suggests It Won't Work.
Britain is following Australia into a policy that has already struggled to keep children off social media, while forcing adults through intrusive age checks.
The United Kingdom announced on Monday that it will become the second country to ban social media for children 15 and younger. Speaking at a press conference, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said, "Government is always about choices, and it's clear to me that a full ban is the right choice."
"Every parent can see it with their own eyes. Social media is making children unhappy. It's making it easier for bullies to harass and abuse them," Starmer added. "And it could even be harming their mental health, exposing them to content that is dangerous because that's what grabs their attention. It's designed to be addictive."
The ban, which is due to take effect next year, will cover a select number of "user-to-user" apps, including TikTok, X, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, and Snapchat. The full list of which platforms the ban will apply to has not yet been released.
The government is also considering overnight curfews and breaks in infinite scrolling for those under 19, with further details expected in July, according to the BBC. This could mean that 16- and 17-year-olds, who can already legally have sex, work, and pay taxes, and whom the government wants to let vote, would not be allowed to access social media at night.
The question of how this would be enforced remains up in the air. Australia, the only other country in the world to introduce a ban on those under 16 accessing social media, has struggled to do so. Around 70 percent of children who already had accounts on Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, or Facebook still had them after the ban came into effect, according to a survey published by Australia's eSafety Commissioner.
Regardless of how the ban will be enforced, one thing is certain: It will come at the expense of the privacy of all British internet users. The government cannot ban children from social media without asking everyone else to prove they are not children. Ofcom, Britain's communications regulator, says in its own guidance under the Online Safety Act that age checks can include facial age estimation, open banking, digital identity services, credit card checks, email-based age estimation, mobile network checks, and photo-ID matching.
Civil liberties groups have warned of privacy risks. Responding to the government's announcement, Jack Coulson, head of advocacy at Big Brother Watch, said that everyone will "face a 'papers, please' demand to get online," and that the proposals would force the public to trust sensitive identity documents to companies with "serious track records of leaks and hacks."
Even so, the government's plan appears to have been designed by people with very little understanding of how teenagers actually use the internet. As one survey of Europeans aged 13 to 18 found, 74 percent of teenagers on average said they watched videos on YouTube to learn something new for school, and 71 percent on average watched videos on YouTube to learn something new for fun or outside of school.
"My son is obsessed with classical music," author and journalist Stephen Pollard said on X. "He is a gifted cellist who wants to be a professional musician. He spends hours watching performances on YouTube - learning so much about the profession he hopes to pursue. To carry on watching these performances and lectures that can be found nowhere else, he will have to break the law. It's utterly mad."
Social media is also used to stay in touch with friends and family. According to an Ofcom report, almost three-quarters of 13- to 17-year-olds who use social media say they help them feel closer to friends. A majority of both girls (71 percent) and boys (60 percent) see being online as good for helping to build and maintain friendships.
Leading up to the ban, the government conducted a three-month public consultation that it said was needed to gather evidence. Now it's looking more like retroactive justification. Of the parents who responded to the consultation, 90 percent support a minimum age for children to access social media. But a consultation is not a poll, and respondents are not a representative sample of British parents. Those motivated enough to respond to a government consultation on children's social media use are likely to have stronger views on the issue, and are probably more supportive of restrictions than the average parent.
Parents are, of course, entitled to make different choices for their own children. If a parent wants to take YouTube or other apps away from their child, that is their decision. However, the children supposedly being protected by the ban do not seem especially convinced.
In a BBC interview with a room full of 11- to 14-year-olds, a presenter asked whoever supported the ban to raise their hands, which no child did. One student, Isabella, said she "didn't think it would actually happen," adding that she had expected the prime minister to "give it more time or more consideration." Her main concern was losing a way to contact friends, parents, and family. When the presenter asked what she would do with all of her newfound free time, Isabella succinctly replied: "stare at a wall."
