To think we absolutely have to ban social media for under 16s.

@Tiswa - of course children need to be educated. However, the older they are, the more likely they are able to understand and think critically. It will also depend on each child’s maturity.
However, Governments have always tended to protect children from harms, be that drugs, alcohol, peadophiles, inappropriate film content with age rating etc etc.
A lot of the social media sites are not regulating content in an age appropriate way and the entire internet is arguably a massive safeguarding risk for children. Kids mental health has deteriorated massively since the widespread use of the smart phone and hours of internet use.
The difficulty is that the internet is also at the same time an incredibly learning tool with huge amounts of important information.
Leaving the policing of online access to parents alone, is negligent. It needs to be a coordinated effort from social media companies, Governments and parents, all working together, in an optimum way.
We have thousands and thousands of children with mental health issues and screen addiction and many have seen content that is completely not age appropriate and plenty are the victims of online bullying and grooming.

So I think at this point the parent activism is way beyond banning phones in schools and is demanding proper regulation by policy makers and social media giants. Of course, if we can get devices themselves that ban anything age inappropriate that would be a win win, but not sure if that really is workable?

@Araminta1003 there is already scope for schools to be phone free - if parents want a school to be phone free then that can be raised with the school and opinions asked for and taken from there.

the Government will not I suspect get involved because their is no easy solution no easy way to deal with this unless parents are on board and for every parent who wants it you are going to find one who does not.

Education is key here both for parents and for the children - a magical switch doesn’t suddenly go off at 16/18 etc and make them completely capable instead a gradual education process and maturing tends to occur.

I have to say that in my London borough there is now a WhatsApp group for smartphone free childhood for pretty much every state secondary school. So there is definitely some very strong parent activism going on. At some point, No10 will have no choice but to listen.

There is no political will to do this, because our Government is scared of Trump and his social media cronies. Our kids are the victims.

Yes, this exactly! I think it’s a cop out to simply say “oh well, that ship has sailed so 🤷‍♀️”

We'll have to agree to disagree then. You will never get young people off social media in my opinion - the genie is long gone out of the bottle. You can't get the parents off social media (oh, the irony of having this debate on social media) so you won't even win the argument with most of them.

Or buying teenagers hip flasks because they might cut their lip on a bottle of vodka when in the park.

To take your drinking analogy, not ALL under 18 year olds are down the park drinking alcohol. And to take the analogy even further, the equivalent of not banning social media at all would be opening pubs for 13 - 17 year olds to go and get pissed in a free for all… which essentially what social media is. Kids under 16 aren’t sensible enough to navigate it. You can still teach them sensible use, but not until they are older

I fundamentally disagree with you. As I have said in previous posts, teenagers especially young teenagers should not have access to social media regardless of whether there is a legal ban on it or not. Parents should remove all social media apps from their phones and explain to the child why there are doing it. Yes some children will find a work around. Yes some children will set up a burner phone. Of course they will. That’s up to the parents how to deal with this. However by removing the apps and setting up proper parent control on the phone, removing phones from bedrooms and stopping teenagers relying on phones all the time, most children will benefit.

Crazy thing to think that that approach will get you anywhere. I didn't say the law was a problem, but when you ban under 18s from drinking and they are still down at the park throwing vodka and coke down their necks, how exactly are you going to stop them? Telling them not to drink or it's bad for them doesn't work. On the other hand, teaching them to drink sensibly may not be the best option, but it's the most realistic one. Banning social media will not stop it existing and it won't stop people being on it. It drives it underground. That underground already exists - the dark web. Do you really want it bigger and more accessible to young people, because if that is where social media for them is, they will find it. There are already "safeguards" and age limitations - oddly young people get around them. Especially when it comes to tech, they are more savvy that the safeguards. You don't get anywhere banning social media - you need to teach people how to use it, and how to spot the dangers.

Crazy thing to say. Just because some people choose to break a law does not mean the law is the problem. The people are.

Quite rightly smoking, vaping and alcohol are out of bounds for under 18s and arguably access to social media and a young age is as harmful / more harmful than any of these.

Hows the ban on smoking, vaping and alcohol for under 18's going?

Young people will get around any safeguard you care to put in place, and they will be even more inclined to do something if it isn't allowed. Prohibition has never been effective, and it still isn't.

I think social media companies need to be more accountable for allowing harmful content on there.
Maybe if there was the threat of an outright ban they would sit up and take notice and do better 🤔.
It terrifies me- the manosphere, telling teens how to kill themselves, what it does to our kids body images, and just the whole impact on their mental health.
Parents need to be better educated as well.

Because there’s a lot of people who won’t do that despite shouting from the rooftops about the danger of social media. They want someone (typically the government) to do it for them so they have the easy way out.
if a ban was to come in it would be still up to the parents to largely enforce it. Guess what? They won’t do that either. Every excuse under the sun will be put forward as to why their child is an exception to the rule. When something happens the child (or another child) as a result of the parents unwillingness to actually parent, it will be everyone else’s fault except theirs.
All everyone else can do is try to ensure their own child is kept away from social media as much as possible and for as long as possible.

If you don't want your child being on social media, then don't let your child on social media.

Not sure why we need a law for it.

The support of the ban on this thread tells me that we do have a lot of people happy to give their personal details to any third party on the governemnt's command AND they want the governmt to give this command.

Then why not focus on getting parents to do this now - educate them and our children on sensible use.

I cannot really see any way if implementing this that isn’t either/or both a very expensive waste of resources and something that can be overruled by parents.

so if anything that is tried to implement can get overruled by parents why not educate now as to why parental controls shouldn’t be done now.

@taxguruif the parental controls are set up correctly on iPhone, this can’t be done.

You would still find parents downloading it onto the phone though - most contracts are in the parents name - Apple ID, money information or equivalent. If parents wanted their children to have it

then how do you handle the families who post children on it - anyone who posts a picture of a child is that included?

the genie is out of the bottle - controlling content should be a priority and educating parents to have proper parental controls over these things.

Making it a state decision isn’t going to stop it educating parents is

They'd just load it back onto their phone. They're not stupid, and if they can't do it themselves, they'll get a friend to load it back on, maybe putting access via a VPN to by pass any UK controls.

@Cl0cks
There is no way to reduce the risk of danger to zero. Even locking your child in their bedroom with nothing but a book won’t completely remove the risk of danger. But that’s not the point and you know it.

Allowing children unsupervised access to social media vastly increases the risk of danger and mental health issues. That’s the point. Take it off their phone.

But with a proper national ID card system, you could just provide the internet firm with your unique ID reference and they could do a limited search with a "yes/no" interrogation answer as to whether the person is over 16/18 or not. No need for them to have access to any other information.

A bit like that system they had for hiring cars abroad, where you applied online for a code via a UK website and gave the code to the foreign hire company, and all they could do was a very brief interrogation as to the validity of your driving licence.

There's really no need for lots of information on the card itself - it can all just be linked back to databases in the background with robust controls as to which users/organisations can access which bits of information.

In person a lot of banking like that still gets done in person or with hard copy id (and via Government agencies)

National Insurance is potentially one way but again can be easily subverted by using a parents.

Personally for me cleaning up and making sure content is ok on these sites for ALL users is more important, removing anything dodgy and making them safe. I have a 16 year old nothing happened 3 weeks ago that makes her more equipped to deal with it than she was before.

I think that there will be a lot more identity theft if this happens and that the most likely victims will be elderly people who aren’t online so have no clue that someone is pretending to be them online.

You can already buy fake IDs, fake MOT pass certificates etc online, how long until kids are sold details of adults ?