Today’s Social Media Ban Announcement: Discussion

[ByeByeTikTok]

I haven’t seen a thread for today’s expected ban on social media for Under 16s so thought I’d start one. If there already is one pls link and I’ll get this deleted.

What will it likely include?
What won’t it include?
How do you and your kids feel about it, especially if they’re already using it?
Will you follow it, and when?
Will people try to get round it?

Very much agree - I think this lets tech companies off the hook. They can now argue "there's no kids on there, so we don't have to moderate content", when of course any tech-savvy kid will work out how to get around it.

I think much tougher regulation would have been a better approach.

They'll just download a free vpn so what's the point

Because it's very poorly thought out and doesn't really understand the nature of the problem nor consider the unintended consequences.

The children most at risk will still be most at risk. But that's ok as the middle class voters will be under the misguided impression that it's 'problem solved' and be able to abdicate responsibility again.

It's surprising just how many MN users don't realise MN is a social media platform.

It’s the same playbook. Just like tobacco, we all know social media is addictive because we are all addicted to varying degrees!! What more evidence do you need? I’m being flippant - of course we need evidence for legislative change, but the evidence is building, just as it did with the other things I listed. Often bans have come in as evidence is building, not once it is settled.

Yes this is why it has been easy for us to not install any social media on our 11 year olds phone. She has sensible pals with sensible parents who have the same views. Because they are not on social media, she’s not bothered about it at all. But she’s moving to high school after the hols so I suspect that will change.

An 8 year old should be nowhere near social media ffs.

Tbh my child watches a lot of TikTok’s of children of a similar age to her doing GCSE’s sharing tips for revision, she also follows her old therapist on social media who also shares tips, in fact we found her therapist on social media. Sure they watch other crap but I monitor it, a lot.

Taking Snapchat away, ok, but surely this will all just move to WhatsApp?

Granted some parents don’t give a shit.

So you are responsible enough to vote, but not use social media?

Is it?

You mean the really overly leftie bluesky that apparently has no issues? Except if you still have visions and aren't tone deaf.

Has the government actually said Bluesky is allowed? Do you have a link, please?

I’m delighted. We have to start somewhere and I did honestly shed a few tears for Al the families who truly don’t have “shit parents” as someone put it up-thread, but have found themselves facing devastating circumstances due to the direct or indirect effects of SM on their kids.

I wish something could be done to rein in WhatsApp but I appreciate it’s a bigger challenge.

Voting doesnt have as much impact on society as social media does.

I presume YouTube Kids is still allowed? It’s not perfect but I like the science videos on there. As people have said above I think the gaming chat can be as toxic. I wonder whether that will be regulated in time.

Surely this would have been the perfect opportunity to stop parenting influencers exploiting their children online? Why is that allowed but a 15 year old watching a crochet tutorial is going to be banned?

there is an easily found list of the banned ones

I have checked, the claim is that Bluesky could be left out of the ban not will. The claim is from GB News, who then go on to say:

"Ministers will rule on which specific platforms face an under-16 ban at a later date".

So, fake news basically. It us being spread on X.

Bluesky has its own level of sexual content, it's more trans on bluesky thats why its ok

This is a good point.

A child can't watch social media content.

But they can be the social media content.

As far as I can see there has not been a list published and people are just taking any excuse to moan. The only details at the minute is a headline ‘platforms like Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X.’ It seems obvious they’ve used the biggest names for the headline to make it clear what is being discussed.

There are always feckless parents who will help their kids get around the ban. Not sure how many 13 year olds can actually buy a VPN!

There was a young girl on TV this morning saying that she was on for 8 hours yesterday and the ban was wrong. When the reporter asked her what she would do with her time she said 'she would just stare at the wall'. The ban is correct. It wont be 100% and of course I am not sure of the timing bearing in mind this has been going on for years but it is the right thing to do.

Instagram is dangerous. I use tofollow school updates and a handful of home improvement creators. It must have picked up on something and my feed was populated with gloomy, depressive content relating to a field of study, advocating for students or newly qualified graduates to give up their studies or jobs and promoting that horrible sense of victimhood, even glamouring self harm. These were coming in hard and fast, post after post. Around the same time I also received a barrage of AI generated posts about CSA and alleged 'survivors' (it was AI generated, not real) sharing stories about going on sleepovers and being abused as children. I felt disturbed by it and I am not easily rattled. Imagine a young teenager dealing with this.

They’ll have to include it. Otherwise you’ll just get successive govs doing the same and leaving out what suits them.

This is precisely why it's nothing more than a piece of fraudulent, lazy politicking, which dishonestly purports to be something it is not. The U-18 pornography age verification farce is exactly the same.

There is no intention of holding teens or Guardians responsible for their own use, instead, some unenforceable legislation that purports to shift the onus onto SM companies to regulate who can and can not use their apps. This presents a number of irreconcilable issues which render the legislation wholly pointless.

First of all, any company not based entirely in the UK can simply ignore the legislation because Ofcom is utterly powerless outside the UK, as 4Chan are handily proving, to the extent that even their lawyers are openly trolling Ofcom's continued impotence.

Then there is the simple fact that by shifting onus to the SM companies, they can simply put up a few cursory restrictions on access from the UK, claim "job done", meanwhile every teen just continues on with SM usage as before because the workaround involves two more clicks on a keyboard or activating an in-browser VPN.

Yet another of the endless examples of UK politicians being wholly incapable of grasping what the Internet actually is, or at least, relying on the public's general ignorance of the fact that UK laws have no jurisdiction whatsoever over Internet entities not based in the UK. The fact their products can be accessed and utilised by people inside the UK is inconsequential.

Feel free to share if you’re going to make that claim because it doesn’t appear to be the case.

Is there,? Could you link please, because it seems no announcement has been made on which sites will be banned. Even GB News admits that in its article.