This is another one of those posts where I write something so I can refer back to it later when inevitably things go wrong and the pendulum of public opinion swings the other way. This time on th topic of banning social media for under-16s. If you are reading this a few years down the line, sorry, but I told you so. Here’s what is probably going to happen:
There will be a loud, reassuring promise that a ban is simple, necessary, and all about safety. What will be glossed over is that such a ban is not realistically enforceable without some form of digital ID, and once you go there, you have crossed a very big line. The infrastructure required to make this work will not be limited to children, and it will not stay limited to social media.
The Online Safety Act will be held up as proof that this is all proportionate and sensible. In reality, it already incentivises platforms to over remove content and over comply, because the risk of getting it wrong is too high. Layering an age based ban on top of that simply accelerates the same dynamic, more surveillance, more blunt enforcement, and less nuance. This will be framed as a technical detail, but it is actually the core of the problem.
Anyone raising concerns will be accused of not caring about children, because “safety” will be treated as a conversation stopper rather than something that requires serious thought. It will be implied that opposing a ban means wanting children to be harmed. What will not be acknowledged is that saying the state should not replace parenting is not anti safety, it is pro responsibility and pro common sense.
Parents will quietly lose agency while being told this is all for their benefit. Rather than empowering parents and guardians to supervise and guide their children, responsibility will be shifted upwards to regulators and systems that cannot possibly understand individual families, maturity, or context. A far better solution, which will be largely ignored, would be forcing platforms to give parents meaningful access to their children’s accounts.
Children, being children, will work around the restrictions. They always do. They will migrate to darker, less visible spaces where there is less oversight, not more. The headline problem will not disappear, it will just move somewhere harder to see, while politicians congratulate themselves on having “done something”.
When the unintended consequences start to surface, the same people pushing hardest for bans will act surprised. They will talk about tweaks, expansions, and further controls. By then the legal and technical groundwork will already be in place, and rolling it back will be described as irresponsible or dangerous.
Even Molly Russell’s father has spoken against this approach, which should give anyone pause. If his experience does not earn him a fair hearing in this debate, that tells you something uncomfortable about how shallow and performative this discussion has become.
So yes, this is one to bookmark. If you are reading this in a few years’ time, when the harms are clearer and the freedoms are narrower, I really am sorry. But this was always the predictable outcome.
