Steve Dempsey
EARLIER THIS WEEK, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a ban on social media for teenagers. From early next year under 16s will be blocked from accessing Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter.
Livestreaming and messaging with strangers – including in gaming – will be switched off by default. Messaging services like WhatsApp and Signal aren’t included. How will age verification work? That bit’s unknown. A range of methods will be used, which will be set out by the UK’s communication watchdog Ofcom.
“This is a line in the sand,” said Starmer announcing the ban.
“Tech giants had their chance and failed, but we’re stepping in to protect children, back parents and set a new normal for future generations.”
Cue a lot of moaning from tech companies and some legitimate gripes from experts and children.
Tech companies telling anyone who’ll listen that banning teens from social media will push them to more unsafe online spaces. If kids aren’t on Facebook, maybe they’ll end up on 4chan, or so the argument goes. When mainstream platforms become inaccessible, young people may move to encrypted services, private group chats or fringe platforms that have fewer protections than the big players.
While it’s true that visible, well-known platforms may be safer than niche ones, and a lot of money has been spent on promoting safe online spaces, like Instagram Teen accounts, perhaps we should be aiming to give children – and the rest of us – more options than ‘bad’ and ‘really bad’ when it comes to online experiences.
Enforcement problems
Another criticism is that an outright ban is difficult to enforce. Look at Australia, where teenagers are finding a host of ways to circumvent a similar social media ban that kicked in last year. 61% of kids ages 12–15 who had accounts before the ban still have access to at least one of them.
Teenagers have historically been good at bypassing restrictions. Who hasn’t used a fake ID when underage? Or got someone’s older brother to buy cider? This is nothing new. The online equivalent is using VPNs, alternative devices and borrowed credentials. Critics say that Australia shows a social media ban leaves teenagers open to harm, and creates a law that is widely ignored and disdained by many of the people it’s designed to protect.
But there is a flipside.
Almost 5 million accounts have been disabled, and hundreds of thousands of new accounts have not been set up for Australian kids. Plus, a recent poll found that 60% of parents reported improved behavioral outcomes following the ban. (It’s important to note though that there was broadly positive sentiment towards the ban before it came into force, so there’s probably confirmation bias at play here.)
More info sharing
Some critics have also pointed to major privacy problems with a social media ban for teenagers. To ban under-16s, platforms must know who is under 16. This means some form of age verification is required, like government ID or facial age estimation. Privacy campaigners rightly point out that any ban may create a surveillance infrastructure that lasts long after the policy is enacted.
Do we really think that making everyone provide more personal information will protect us more?
And there’s one other major, valid criticism. A social media ban for teenagers will have an outsized effect on the most vulnerable teens. Social media doesn’t just offer doomscrolling for the masses, it also offers LGBT support networks, disability communities, mental health groups and a host of other networks for vulnerable or marginalised teens.
Children who benefit most from online communities are often those with the weakest offline support systems, and a blanket ban removes access for vulnerable young people alongside everyone else.
These are all legitimate arguments.
I’m all for putting the mental health of kids ahead of the bottom line of big tech companies, but it’s worth pointing out that one of the appeals of this sort of legislation is that it sounds great from a political perspective, but allows politicians to avoid harder reforms.
A ban is easy to announce, easy to explain, popular with parents, and sounds like a strong stance. All good political fodder. The risk is that banning teenagers from social media creates the appearance of action, while avoiding deeper questions about platform business models, advertising systems, algorithmic design and the attention economy.
So what’s this sort of legislation actually trying to address? If it’s addictive design, and algorithmic information systems that show increasingly polarising and dangerous content, this would be better done by ensuring big tech products are designed less like dopamine slot machines, and are liable for defamatory content misinformation or hate speech they host.
This is also something that applies to all of society, not just teenagers. There is an existing legislative framework for this. The EU’s Digital Services Act, which covers product design, content moderation and transparency around how large platforms’ algorithms work.
If the aim is to assist a teenage mental health crisis there are other policies that could be advocated. Banning phones in schools, funding youth clubs, arts programmes and public service volunteering that targets young people may be more impactful. After all, the strongest predictor of mental wellbeing isn’t lack of screen time, it’s the quality of real world relationships and connections.
Governments could, and maybe should take these tacks. But given the lobbying power of big tech and the many other areas of our society that need investment, this could take some time. In the meantime, perhaps the blunt instrument of a social ban for teenagers isn’t such a bad idea.
Yes, it’s a hammer rather than a scalpel. Yes, it will have some negative impacts. And yes, it will be almost impossible to enforce across the board.
But surely it’s worth trialling?
Who knows what might happen? Laws can always be changed? Better digital products could be designed for teens? This could point the way for adults too. Who knows! We could probably all do with ditching our followers and getting a life.
Steve Dempsey is a media and technology expert and commentator. He is also director of advocacy and communications with the Irish Cancer Society.