Two leading voices battle it out
Social media bans for young people are gaining traction around the world. Australia became the first country to implement one in December, with under-16s blocked from using YouTube, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram. Similar legislation is being considered in Spain, France and Denmark.
Here in the UK, the government has just closed its public consultation. The Lords repeatedly tried to push through a ban by adding it as an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, attempts that were rejected by the Commons. Responding to growing pressure, the government has agreed to ban smartphones in schools in England and said it would impose “some form of age or functionality restrictions” on social media. Whether this will be a total ban is yet to be determined.
Social media companies are also facing a slew of global lawsuits over alleged harms caused to young people, including a landmark case in Los Angeles in March in which Google and Meta were found liable for the addictive designs of their platforms.
For its supporters, a ban is essential to protect children from the worst effects of the internet. For critics, it’s an unacceptable infringement on personal freedoms that isn’t supported by sufficient evidence – and a fool’s errand that faces numerous practical challenges.
We invited two leading voices with differing views to present their arguments and hash it out.
In the “Yes” corner is Daisy Greenwell, a former Times journalist and co-founder of the advocacy group Smartphone Free Childhood. The group is leading a grassroots campaign to ban social media for under-16s, backed by an extensive network of like-minded parents and celebrity ambassadors. It also advocates for delaying access to smartphones until the age of 14.
Standing for “No” is Margarita Panayiotou, a senior lecturer in educational psychology at the University of Manchester. She was the principal investigator of #So.Me, a three-year study of adolescent mental health and social media use that ended in January.
Yes
For more than a decade, parents have been asked to manage the risks of social media on their own. While families struggle with the consequences, the companies designing these platforms – and profiting from young people’s attention – have been allowed to carry on largely unregulated. That situation is no longer tenable. Across the UK, parents have had enough.
Over the past two years, hundreds of thousands of families from every background have joined the Smartphone Free Childhood movement after seeing the impact of smartphones and social media in their own children’s lives. In just five days this January, a quarter of a million of them wrote to their MPs with a simple message: it is time to raise the age for social media.
Parents do not organise in those numbers unless something is going badly wrong. Ask almost any parent, teacher or teenager and they can name a young person struggling because of social media. The harms are widespread, partly because opting out is so difficult. When every child in a class is on these platforms, it takes extraordinary resolve for a family to say no. This cannot be left to individual households to manage.
We would never expect parents to regulate other powerful industries alone. Age limits exist across society – for alcohol, gambling and driving – because we recognise that some experiences carry risks and are better introduced later. Social media should be no exception.
This is not about banning children from the internet, nor about opposing technology. Young people will grow up online, and digital tools bring genuine benefits. But those benefits are currently delivered through systems engineered to maximise engagement – often by amplifying the most extreme or emotionally charged content. Parents cannot out-parent trillion-dollar attention engines.
Raising the age to 16 would not solve everything. But it would give children a few more years to grow before entering commercially-driven social media systems, while creating the pressure for platforms to redesign their products with young people’s wellbeing in mind.
Childhood only happens once. The question facing us now is simple: what kind of digital environment do we want the next generation to grow up in – one designed around their wellbeing, or one designed to boost shareholder profits in Silicon Valley?
No
I fully agree that the responsibility for managing the risks of social media cannot be left to individual families (or schools) alone. Parents should not be expected to regulate complex digital systems by themselves, and we should ask for more from the companies designing these platforms and the policymakers responsible for overseeing them.
This is where I differ: there is no evidence that raising the age to 16 will achieve this. I see three core challenges with this approach.
First, a ban risks placing the burden we want to relieve from families back onto those very families. Children do not grow up in isolation. They live in peer groups, classrooms and digital environments that shape their behaviour. In practice, bans would still require parents to monitor children’s access to social media, placing the burden of day-to-day regulation back onto households.
Second, bans may push young people’s social media use, and the challenges associated with it, underground. Adolescence is a period of exploration and risk-taking, and many young people will inevitably move to other digital spaces or find ways to circumvent restrictions. When this happens, behaviour becomes harder for parents, teachers and support systems to see and respond to. Without early education or support, we risk postponing or worsening the challenge rather than addressing it, sending young people into complex digital environments without the skills to navigate them safely. In our research, young people consistently ask for more guidance about navigating digital life rather than bans.
Third, the public conversation about social media is often, understandably, shaped by the most visible harms because those are the moments requiring intervention. But young people’s experiences online are not exclusively negative. Many young people describe social media as a place where they find communities, support networks and opportunities for expression they may not have offline. Policies that prevent young people from accessing social media risk cutting off important sources of connection and support for those who rely on them most.
None of this means the status quo is acceptable. Instead of bans, we should focus on ensuring that online environments are designed with both the wellbeing and rights of young people in mind, rather than pushing their use underground. There needs to be a balance between children’s right to be protected from harm and their right to participate in digital environments that are now central to social life. Neither unregulated use nor blanket bans achieve that balance.
Platforms should therefore be held accountable for how their products are designed and how they affect young users. Stronger platform regulation, safer and age-appropriate design standards, and meaningful digital literacy education are likely to be more effective and sustainable solutions than bans.
Yes
The idea that raising the age for accessing social media will push children into “underground” digital spaces sounds plausible – until you look at what’s already happening. Today’s biggest social media platforms are highly sophisticated attention engines that, within minutes, serve up toxic and extreme content to children – because that is what drives engagement. It’s not an edge case. It’s the system working as designed. And that’s before we even get to the explosion in grooming and sextortion taking place on these platforms.
You’re concerned about young people being shut out of the usual platforms and therefore turning to other digital spaces that could be even worse or more dangerous. But the evidence suggests that the harm is already concentrated on the biggest platforms.
And the reason children are there in such overwhelming numbers is simple: network effects. Everyone is there, so everyone has to be there. Change that – for everyone, at once – and the dynamic shifts. The network effect dissolves, and children spend more of their time together in real life again.
Let’s be clear: social media is not the same as community. Despite being more “connected” than any generation before them, children are lonelier than they’ve ever been. Since the launch of the iPhone, time spent with friends has fallen by 65 per cent, while the average UK 12-year-old now spends 5.5 hours a day on their phone, scrolling alone. These platforms are not designed around children’s wellbeing – they are designed to maximise attention.
Most social media platforms already set a minimum age of 13 due to data protection laws. Yet 86 per cent of 10-12 year olds have social media accounts. The rule exists – it’s just not being enforced, because it doesn’t suit platform business models to enforce it.
Raising the age changes that. It turns a weak, largely symbolic limit into a real one – placing responsibility on platforms to remove underage users, rather than leaving families to manage it alone. When the rule applies to everyone, the norm shifts too.
This is the bottom line: if these platforms cannot show they are safe for children, they should not have access to children. In every other area of childhood, companies must demonstrate that their products are safe before children use them – whether it’s toys, medicines or car seats. Social media companies should meet the same basic standard.
No
Indeed, social media companies should ensure and provide evidence that their platforms are safe for children, but a ban does not achieve that. If anything, it may create a false sense of security without addressing the underlying core issues.
First, in other areas, we do not respond to products with potential benefits and risks by banning them. We regulate them. Many products that are valuable for children – such as toys, books or films – can also pose risks if they are not designed with age in mind. For example, toys with small parts can be dangerous for younger children. Yet we do not ban all toys; instead, we ensure they are age-appropriate, accompanied by clear age ratings and guidance. Social media should be no different. Platforms can and should be re-designed to align with young people’s developmental needs, rather than taking the step of removing access altogether.
Second, framing this as a choice between “raising the age limit to 16 or not” risks oversimplifying a complex issue. Potential harms exist across the wider internet, including on platforms that would fall outside any ban. Also, young people continue to develop beyond 16, so age-appropriate design should apply across all ages. At the same time, digital literacy must start early, providing children with the skills to navigate their online environments, rather than delaying exposure without preparation.
Third, young people’s needs are not uniform. For some, social media is not optional. It is their main source of connection and support, particularly for those with limited access to in-person interaction. A blanket ban risks removing these lifelines.
More broadly, focusing on a healthier balance between online and offline life is important. However, we should not make the mistake of assuming that this balance would be automatically achieved through bans, especially as some evidence suggests that one digital activity is often replaced by another.
This is because social media does not exist in isolation. Young people’s social worlds have changed, with fewer youth spaces and playgrounds, fewer opportunities for in-person interaction, and shifts in family life. These contexts shape how and why young people engage online. Ignoring them means overlooking a substantial part of young people’s development, and risks designing policies that fail to address wider issues.
In our rush to protect young people, we must not oversimplify the problem. Solutions should lie in better platform design, stronger regulation and meaningful digital education, working alongside improvements in young people’s offline environments.
Yes
We agree on the end goal: platforms should be safe for children. The difference is how we get there.
We have spent the last decade trying the approach you’re proposing here – incremental regulation, voluntary improvements, digital literacy alongside access – and it has not worked. In that time, platforms have become more immersive, more algorithmic and more addictive. Parents and young people are not reporting safer, healthier digital lives. They are telling us the opposite.
At some point, we have to be honest about that. This is not like toys or books. Those industries are required to meet clear, enforceable safety standards before products reach children. Social media has been allowed to operate in reverse – reaching children first, and only then being asked to retrofit safety onto systems built for engagement.
Instead, a ban should include minimum safety standards that platforms have to pass before they can serve minors – for example, not having addictive features such as streaks and algorithms, or unmoderated user-generated content. This would move us from a punitive system that attempts to punish platforms after harm occurs, to a prohibitive one in which they don’t get access to kids until they can prove they’re safe.
Raising the minimum age is not a rejection of better design. It is how we force it to happen.
One of the reasons platforms have struggled to make meaningful changes is competition. If one company makes its product less addictive, it risks losing young users to another that hasn’t. That creates a race to the bottom. A clear age boundary, applied across all platforms at once, changes those incentives overnight. It levels the playing field and creates the conditions for real innovation – not around capturing attention, but around meeting basic standards of safety.
And we should be clear about what is being defended. If we are saying that platforms like TikTok and Instagram are the best form of “community” we can offer children, then something has gone badly wrong. Young people deserve connection and belonging – but not through systems designed primarily to monetise their attention.
And there is a bigger picture here. With AI rapidly becoming embedded in everyday life, the stakes are only rising. If we cannot act decisively on something as visible as social media, what hope do we have of shaping what comes next?
No
It’s problematic to assume that banning social media for under 16s would lead to improved platform design.
First, such an approach would still rely on voluntary platform improvements, a mechanism that we both agree is insufficient.
Second, early evidence from contexts such as Australia suggests that bans are not straightforward to enforce. Therefore, the assumption that incentives would shift overnight is an overstatement. In practice, young people continue to access these platforms, meaning that potential risks remain while access becomes less visible and harder to monitor. We need better and more sustainable solutions.
This is precisely why it is important to be clear about what is being defended. At no point did I argue that social media platforms are the best form of community for young people. Rather, for some, they represent one of the few available forms of social connection, particularly for those who are isolated or away from home, as highlighted by clinicians and charities working with these groups.
My argument is that we must hold both sides of this issue: acknowledging the risks, while also recognising that removing access will not in itself resolve underlying problems and may introduce unintended consequences.
I also disagree with the claim that digital literacy and incremental approaches have simply “not worked”. The issue is not that these have been tried and failed, but that they have been implemented in fragmented and inconsistent ways, making their effectiveness difficult to assess. In the UK, social media literacy education remains non-statutory and uneven, often relying on the work of charities and individual schools. Teachers and young people in our work tell us that current efforts are not enough. While there have been calls to embed this within the national curriculum, this has not yet been realised.
Similarly, while there is growing movement toward addressing platform design, such as under the EU Digital Services Act, these efforts are recent and remain largely indirect. It is therefore difficult to conclude that such approaches have been implemented, let alone that they have failed.
And crucially, any approach must remain consistent with children’s rights, not only to protection, but also to participation in digital environments. Unregulated use risks undermining these rights, but blanket bans do too.
Closing Thoughts
Yes
Of course, a ban is not a silver bullet. Raising the age must sit alongside stronger regulation, better design and meaningful digital education. And it must be part of wider efforts to rebuild offline childhood – youth clubs, sport, safe places to gather. This is not about removing children from social media and walking away. It is about resetting the system so that those wider changes have a chance to take hold.
But the bottom line is that if platforms want access to children, they should have to prove that they are safe for them. And if they won’t do that voluntarily, this is how we make it happen – creating the pressure and incentive for a new generation of safer, better-designed digital spaces to emerge.
No
The task is not to choose between access and restriction – a choice that risks oversimplifying the problem. Instead, we urgently need a coherent and structural response: one that includes regulatory frameworks that apply horizontally across platforms and address design features directly, alongside equitable statutory approaches to digital literacy that support young people to engage in digital spaces safely and meaningfully.
Where environments are not appropriate for young people, protecting them is essential; however, the response should not be to remove young people, but to change the environments themselves.