The greatest risk is that measures to verify age will create honey pots of high-value personal information.
The push to ban children from social media is gathering steam, but it’s an idea as footloose as the eponymous big-haired 1980s musical about the town that outlawed dancing to save the kids from themselves.
The prime minister, the opposition leader, the premiers of New South Wales and South Australia, all of them are rallying around digital abstinence, egged on by tabloids at war with Meta over its refusal to extend the news media bargaining code.
These leaders are no doubt well-intentioned, and there can be no sugarcoating the pernicious impact of social networks built to monetise user attention, exposing children to a cesspit of unmoderated content, predatory connections and addictive algorithmic feeds.
Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has championed such a ban in his influential, if contested, bestseller The Anxious Generation, which argues the online ecosystem is driving a youth mental health crisis of anxiety and depression.
In the face of this lived experience, the vow by leaders to protect our children by turning off their access at the source of this danger hits a raw political nerve, as this week’s Guardian Essential report shows.
When my kids were in their early teens, I would have put myself in the “strongly support” column too. Indeed, observing the impact of social media on their young minds, particularly obsessive gaming, was my entry point into thinking more deeply about the politics of technology.
But, in the intervening years, these same online connections have supported my children through lockdown and sustained them since. The content on their feeds – particularly longer-form videos – has extended their horizons and consolidated their friendship groups.
So, while I have sympathy for the motivations behind the prohibition model, I’m no longer convinced banning social media for teenagers is the best way to provide safe online spaces for growing minds.
First, as previous attempts at prohibition have illustrated, decreeing a ban is one thing, enforcing it is something else altogether. Particularly when many master their VPN before hitting puberty.
A second question is what is actually being proposed to be banned? Is it just the big tech realms of Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat? What about gaming networks such as Discord or private message groups? And what of networks set up for study groups or sport networks: will they be off limits too?
Third, what will an enforcement regime look like? How would you actually prove identity in a world of deepfakes and disinformation? Via unregulated AI facial recognition? Handing sensitive personal ID over to the platforms? By deploying untested trust technology?
In all these scenarios the greater risk is that the measures to verify age will create honey pots of high-value personal information, especially at a time when our privacy laws are as loose as Kevin Bacon’s tie.
The government’s announcement last week of incremental reforms are baby steps down this road. But, as noted in our Burning Platforms briefing convened last week, the systemic change we require is on hold until after the next election.
This includes replacing tick-a-box consent – where users sign up to all manner of exploitation in order to access a site – with a general duty of care on the part of those who collect information.
This change is even more popular than the social media ban, with three-quarters of respondents actively in favour of the change and equally supportive of giving people whose information is not handled with care real legal recourse for damages.
The truth is that without comprehensive data protection, the idea of forcing everyone – and it would not just be kids but anyone wanting to register for a social media platform – to provide even more information online is reckless folly.
Stronger privacy laws and rights over how personal information is used means a healthier online life for everyone, forcing the platforms to take their feet off the attention-seeking accelerator.
Notably, Instagram’s rearguard bid to avoid the looming ban has been to change their “teen” accounts to a privacy by default setting and increase protection from bad faith actors. But shouldn’t this be the sort of respect offered to everyone?
Even if these technical barriers could be overcome, my bigger issue is that the ban will actually entrench the dominance of the current anti-social media platforms as something to aspire to, where access is celebrated as a rite of passage like a first drink.
Liberation should be no more the right to scroll Instagram than it is to boot-scoot to Kenny Loggins, and a world where bad eighties music rules the airwaves is not one that I would wish on children of any generation.
And maybe that’s the point. We can’t determine what’s good for the next generation any more than our parents’ could for us.
So, here’s a novel thought: rather than banning them, why not harness young people’s superior digital literacy to shape pro-social network technology where they assert control over their algorithm, where platforms discharge a genuine duty of care and where users exist as subjects not objects.
In designing a better system for them, maybe they can guide us as well. Because from where I sit, my generation of parents has been so asleep at the keyboard that we are hardly in the position to tell our kids how to block’n’scroll.
Written by Peter Lewis for the Guardian. Originally published 24 September 2024.