Mastodawn

A blanket ban on social media for under-16s is the wrong choice. It's not working in Australia, and it won't work in the UK.

Social media harms don't magically stop affecting people as they get older. Bans are also rarely difficult to circumvent. So by failing to ask the social media companies to bear any cost - cleaning up their act, making them legally responsible for content they actively recommend and promote through their content algorithms - Starmer has failed to tackle the problem.

James Baillie Jun 15

But also, for child protection, this is a double-edged sword. Yes, social media exposes some children to things they should never see, but it also exposes children who've been brought up in terrible situations to the possibility that what they're facing is wrong and an alternative world exists. Britain has for decades been obsessed with the danger of strangers, but statistically it has always been the case that more children are under threat from members of their immediate family and community.

James Baillie Jun 15

That's such an unimaginably horrible realisation that we shy away from recognising it, but it's true and we have to confront it if we want to keep children safe. Locking them out of online contact is likely to isolate that block of vulnerable children to a worse degree. Furthermore, when children go on social media anyway, which they will do, they're now doing something illegal, which makes it much *harder* for them to ask an adult for help when something goes wrong online.

@JubalBarca The main thing it achieves is to scratch the English itch to ban something when unrelated things seem to be slipping out of control. It's the equivalent of stress eating for the British establishment.

James Baillie Jun 15

@toerror I wish they'd just go and do actual stress eating instead honestly. I will happily personally send Keir Starmer several packets of snacks and a large box of tea bags if it means we get better governance.

Gin Kangaroo 6d ago

@JubalBarca Off the top of my head I know 3 friends who were sexually abused as children.
One by a (church) babysitter.
One by their uncle.
One by their grandfather.

We HAVE to acknowledge it. We have to give kids ways to contact adults outside their immediate families.

Nuwagaba Gift Jun 15

@JubalBarca
Is this really about protecting children?

James Baillie Jun 15

@nuwagaba2 I think a lot of its advocates earnestly believe that it's about protecting children: I think the growing awareness of social media related harms is genuinely the most important driver behind the government deciding they need to do something. But a bad solution won't help: it's taking an approach which isn't based on the evidence, and won't work, and some people definitely cynically know that but think this is a better public relations exercise than doing something more effective.

Nuwagaba Gift Jun 15

@JubalBarca
Now I understand the reason behind it. Protecting children is another excuse towards taking people's liberty slowly without them realizing. What would be the way out of this?

Book End Jun 15

@FreakyFwoof @JubalBarca i actualy don't no what will tackle the problem, ban the content and it gos underground ban the people and they lie or cheet to gain acceess to all of the content on the plantform. its a nice idea in thery the practice is circomventable

James Baillie Jun 15

@liseo @FreakyFwoof I think things have to be tackled more at the content and algorithms level. The problem differs for different kinds of content: scams and political disinfo don't tend to get "driven underground" for example because the underground doesn't have enough marks to make those things viable. Illegal harms type content does go underground, but in some cases just reducing public exposure there is a net benefit. There are more complex cases though.

Martin Vermeer FCD 6d ago

@JubalBarca @liseo @FreakyFwoof Also, 'social media' isn't a homogeneous blob. Moderation matters. X isn't Mastodon. With competent moderation, there is no need to ban children. Without it, one ought to ban everybody - which shouldn't even be necessary if people had a lick of sense. Who wants to voluntarily experience the ethics-free Nazi wasteland that is X?

@JubalBarca what is happening in practice in Australia atm?

James Baillie Jun 15

@temptoetiam In general the Australian ban is just failing on a technical level. Per ABC (link below), the effective implementation rate is that it's blocking under a third of under-16s.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-06-14/why-teens-say-social-media-ban-isnt-working-for-under-16s/106780590

Why young people say the social media ban is not working six months on

Research suggests many under-16s are still active on social media platforms. BTN High explores why and tests the accuracy of popular technology used to estimate age.

kNeo gHau Jun 15

@JubalBarca Fuck starmer and I'm still not showing my ID online. Does this mean gov accounts can finally be forced off twitter if they're blocking under 18s from getting news and announcements?

James Baillie Jun 15

@kneoghau Sadly I doubt this will change anything about the government's relationship with particular social media sites. And yes, it's a miserable situation all round.

LeonianUniverse🏳️‍🌈Jun 15

@JubalBarca I personally believe it is the parent's responsibility to monitor what children are accessing and it shouldn't be on companies or the government to protect children. Parents give their children access by giving them these devices, they should also be aware what is going on until a child is old enough to understand or an adult so that they can know what they are getting themselves in to before they do. I'm not a parent nor do I ever intend on being a parent.

LeonianUniverse🏳️‍🌈Jun 15

@JubalBarca When I was a kid, my dad didn't place parental controls on our devices or limit us, he simply said, "if your curious about stuff that you find, come to me and we'll talk about it.", I think I turned out pretty well with that in mind, he also said, "If you find stuff and then start acting badly because of what you find, then I'll limit what you can do."

James Baillie Jun 15

@LeonianUniverse Better parental efforts would be great, but a core problem with this as a solution to all these problems is that a lot of parents are very clearly not capable of doing it effectively. A lot of adults are not capable of protecting *themselves* from online harms: sometimes, too, the adults in a child's life are the actual problem that they need to turn to the internet for help with, rather than vice versa. My experience was not dissimilar to yours, but that's not universal.

Matthew Daly Jun 15

@JubalBarca @LeonianUniverse I have been kicking around the idea of social media literacy training, possibly a parent/child one, as a better solution to this combined with stricter guidelines about moderation.

Around 2012-ish Channel 4 made this Flash game called Smokescreen that allowed you to see harmful behaviours on social media demonstrated in a safe environment. A more modern equivalent is probably long overdue.

James Baillie Jun 15

@matthewbdaly @LeonianUniverse Yeah, I think that would help.

I do still think that the big platforms need to take more responsibility for content though: I think if people have actively signed up to see stuff, that's one thing, but if a platform chooses to algorithmically push content at people or create their own content to push (incl. AI summaries) they should be held responsible for disinformation and harmful content therein.

Alien software, human hardware 6d ago

@JubalBarca He's not only failed to tackle the problem, he doesn't even understand it.
And that just days after social media was used to incite a riot.