Under-16s will be banned from using social media, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced.
Starmer says social media is making children unhappy, making it easier for bullies to abuse children, and is “designed to be addictive”. A ban would give children more time, security, and more freedom to grow up - as well as more opportunities, he adds.
“That is all any parent wants. They want to know that Britain will be better for their children, that they will get a fair chance,” the PM says in a speech in Downing Street.
Starmer adds that the government is “not prepared to compromise” on the safety and happiness of children - and that includes in the regulation and enforcement of this ban. He says the government has listened to and learned from countries like Australia, where a similar ban has already been introduced.
I’m not entirely sure how that’s panning out in Aus (a quick search suggests it’s a flop, but the sources aren’t great). I think the general consensus is that it’s not as enforceable as they hoped.
We are moving towards an era of a more locked down web in the UK. The main flag here is “robust age verification” - i.e. we’re moving from “you must provide ID to view adult material on social media” to “you must provide ID to use social media”.
One can quickly see “your id must be retained and linked to your account to reduce crime” and “any officer of the law may view this ID to better support crime reduction” slipping in over the next 20 years or so.
Overall, this feels like another Trojan horse to move towards a China-style de-anonymised web. Bad move all around really.
Oh, there’s pretty solid data about Australia. A large percent of kids are still using social media because the ones who no longer use it are the ones whose parents won’t let them use it, which is of course the same group as the ones whose parents always had that power. But we have heard from some vulnerable minority kids who now no longer get access to the support that they used to have. And that’s really f***** up.
those kids socialising other ways. social media isnt socializing anyway
Of course! Whyever didn’t the bullied queer kids or the kids in abusive households or the kids living in remote areas think of that? I bet they’d feel so silly if you told them they should just find support networks elsewhere 🤦♀️
there were support networks before the giant social media companies. and they didnt harvest your data!
In a lot of cases (like the ones I already mentioned!!) there weren’t!!!
sure there was. you dont need big corporations to have support networks on the internet
Believe it or not, those support networks on the old internet were still using social media. Whether or not a medium for interacting with other people socially is owned by a big corporation has no bearing on whether or not it is a kind of social media, and it hasn’t escaped my notice that your shifting of the goalposts here has not made any actually existing policy proposals aimed at getting youths off it any less harmful in any meaningful sense.
