There is rarely much to commend Keir Starmer for. But on Monday he blocked an amendment to the schools bill which would have required all social media companies to ban under-16s from using their products. In voting against this legislation, MPs have preserved anonymity on the internet, resisted further state powers over what we see online and avoided caving in to a moral panic gripping Westminster.
I don’t want to lavish too much praise on the Prime Minister just yet. The sweeping powers brought in by the Online Safety Act already censor most of online life. Unless you provide companies like Substack and X with identification, you aren’t able to watch speeches in parliament about grooming gangs or content which refers to ‘illegal immigration and people smuggling’. We may soon live in a world in which 16-year-olds will have the vote but won’t be permitted to research the issues on which they’re voting. Meanwhile, the government has just launched a consultation on whether to ban social media for under-16s, so the vote which Labour just whipped against may well soon become government policy anyway.
I was ten when Instagram launched and I have to confess that much of the scaremongering about these apps seems vastly overblown.
Many advocating for a ban point to the impact social media had on their own childhood. I was ten when Instagram launched. My adolescence was firmly characterised by Tumblr, Snapchat and the rise of Facebook. And I have to confess that much of the scaremongering about these apps seems vastly overblown. I saw no evidence to suggest that my peers who spent a lot of time on their phones suffered any more than those who didn’t.
As a member of the first cohort raised online, I have a lot to say for its benefits. If you liked an obscure band or an unusual hobby, social media would house a chatroom for other fans whom one couldn’t have met in real life. If you had to be home before dark, social media gave you a way to talk to friends over long winter evenings. Of course it came with some downsides, but this has been the case for being a teenager at any point in history. Some children will get bullied on social media. But others will be picked on in person. Some girls may develop body image issues from looking at overly thin photoshopped influencers – but anyone who believes this is a phenomenon unique to the internet has clearly never picked up a copy of the Daily Mail.
It is an unavoidable truth that children, particularly girls, seem to be more unhappy. But there are a myriad of reasons for why this is the case. As a starting point: we are far more likely to medicalise children, attach a diagnosis of ‘anxiety’ or ‘depression’ to them at a young age and funnel them into a lifetime of therapy and drugs they may not need. Modern life is designed to do everything possible to prevent children from developing resilience. Are you struggling with exams? Let’s give you extra time. Is that adventure playground too challenging? Let’s regulate it to be safer. Is social media making you sad? Let’s ban it.
Childhood is probably worse than it used to be. But how can we be so sure this is because of the apps on our phones? The main villain is almost certainly traffic. Most children turn 11 before they are permitted to play outside unsupervised. A rise in crime and car accidents has prevented children from developing an inner world away from the watchful eyes of their parents.
And what about TV? Long gone are the days of three channels, when children simply didn’t have access to an infinite stream of diversionary entertainment. Very young children are often plonked down in front of CoComelon, a brightly coloured, relentlessly stimulating sugar rush of entertainment devoid of narrative which must have terrible consequences for attentions spans. But nobody is trying to ban that.
Often missed in a debate ostensibly about online harms for children is the consequence this will have for adults. Last year Australia banned children from creating or maintaining profiles on big media outlets like TikTok, X, Facebook, YouTube and Threads. These companies are now required to use age-assurance technology like government ID or facial recognition to ensure their users are over 16. While many internet-savvy children have simply installed a VPN to get round the rules, adults have been forced to provide private identifying personal information to tech companies to use the services they provide.
Do proponents of a ban in Britain really think this cost is worth the potential benefit of keeping kids offline? Remember that we live in a country which has vastly expanded the power of the state to punish us for posting. Under British law the government is able to use the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 to demand tech companies share the data they have on you if they believe you to have broken the law. If every social media company holds a copy of your ID, and you post something anonymously about immigration that Lord Hermer doesn’t like, it will be all too easy to track you down and arrest you. Suddenly we will live in a world in which almost no one is able to share views outside the Overton window, where whistleblowers have no power to disseminate information.
What is the evidence that a ban could ever be worth this cost? Unfortunately there isn’t much. Activists, including those who tabled the amendments calling for a ban, often point to a 2019 report published by the Chief Medical Officers providing commentary on a systematic review of the impact of screen-based activity on children. But if you read this document it explicitly states that ‘research does not present evidence of a causal relationship between screen-based activities and mental health problems’.
Jonathan Haidt’s work on social media and adolescent mental health is often cited. But numerous academics disagree with him. Dr Pete Etchells, a Bath Spa University researcher who is on the advisory board for the Australian eSafety Commission’s evaluation of the Social Media Minimum Age regulations, argues that ‘there’s simply no consensus in the research community on the impact of social media or smartphones on youth wellness’.
There is some very strong evidence that phone use in school has a negative impact on performance. Children at schools which prevent phone use during the day tend to achieve slightly higher GCSE grades. More schools should be screen free. This is obviously because going on a phone during lessons is bad for focus; it proves nothing about the evil effects of social media.
Maybe social media is harmful for some children. But in the absence of strong evidence either way, is it really the state’s job to act as parent? For the same reason that the government shouldn’t be forcing your child to brush their teeth or eat a healthy breakfast, let’s accept this is one area where the government really doesn’t need to wade in.
