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Teens shouldn’t be on social media. That seems to be the opinion of lawmakers around the world, and the next country to ban teenagers from social media could be the UK.
The country’s Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, reportedly told Sky that there would be “more action to young people safe online, including around social media”. This comes after a junior minister told the House of Commons that age or functionality restrictions would be imposed on social media for under-16s.
This move seems to be in the early stages though as there aren’t very many details about how the UK government would implement such restrictions.
“And there are a number of different ways in which that can be achieved, and that’s why we’ve got a consultation to hear from people how we can do that, how we can make sure that it works, and how we can do everything within our power to keep children safe,” Phillipson told British media per The Guardian.
The Secretary of State for Education went on to say that the status quo could not continue, and more needed to be done to protect the country’s youth.
The lessons of Oz
We’re sure that the UK will look to other countries for how they implemented a social media ban, and hopefully learn from those implementations.
Last year, Australia implemented a ban on social media for youngsters below the age of 16. While the ban is supported by major platforms, that support may not be as effective as the Australian government would hope if recent data is anything to go by.
Earlier this month, the Molly Rose Foundation polled Aussie youngsters and found that the majority of them were still able to access accounts they’d opened before the ban was implemented.
“Proponents of a ban argue that it offers an immediate and decisive firebreak, but the early evidence from Australia shows it only lets tech firms off the hook and fails to give children the step change in online safety and wellbeing they need,” said Andy Burrows Chief Executive of the foundation.
The worst part of the ban is that it’s not exactly a ban in the stronger sense of the word. Platforms have to agree to keep youngsters off their platform and some just aren’t doing that at all.
And while governments can compel platforms to implement protections for under-age users such as preventing them from signing up, platforms can also elect not to do that. Under-age users will then flock to those platforms, which may be inherently worse for them.
The UK may want to think long and hard about how it plans to implement such a ban, especially with the woeful implementation of the Online Safety Act, which users have skilfully avoided by using a VPN.
[Image – Jon Pauling from Pixabay]
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