Back 16+ social media ban in 15 secs

[PorpoiseWithPurpose]

If you’re worried about social media and your children, here’s a 15 second thing you can do today.

This is a pre-written email to your local MP asking them to raise the social media age to 16. Just add your name and postcode and it does the rest.

Email your MP here (15 seconds):
https://smartphonefreechildhood.eaction.org.uk/raise-the-age

This week, Keir Starmer said he’s considering an Australia-style age limit on social media, so this issue is live in Parliament right now and your voice can genuinely influence what happens next.

Please also forward this and share it in school year groups, class chats, sports teams, and family groups. Anyone can take part, and every extra message increases the impact.

This isn’t party-political. It’s about protecting children from addictive, algorithm-driven platforms and making it easier for families to hold the line together.

My wife and I have been following some research at Cambridge University on this for the last couple of years. It's worth looking up Cambridge Mind Technologies if you haven't come across them - they've been quietly working on exactly this problem. Their solution is built by actual psychologists and psychiatrists to intervene in the moment a young person hits harmful content, rather than after the fact. And it's free to the user.
What I keep coming back to is the context. Something like 1 in 5 children aged 8-25 in England now meet the criteria for a probable mental disorder, and over 250,000 are waiting for NHS mental health support - often for months. That's not a backlog anymore, that's just the reality. So the question of whether a ban alone is enough feels increasingly relevant when kids are struggling right now, today.
Whether real-time tools like Cami are the answer I genuinely don't know. But it feels like the kind of thing that deserves more attention than it's getting.

Banning it is of no use unless parents supervise their dc. In Australia parents are lying to get their under age kids accounts according to relatives. If parents supervised all computer use it would not be necessary to ban, dc are far more savvy than parents and will work around a ban, potentially using harder to control channels

Banning it is useful in sending a strong message to parents (and children) that it is dangerous for developing brains, and that it isn't necessary or normal for children to have access to social media. At the moment there are a lot of parents who don't like the idea of letting their DC have social media and are terrified of the dangers but get pressured into it by the idea that everyone else in school is on it and so their DC will be left out. Banning it changes the narrative and empowers those parents to say no.

You might as well say there's no point banning children from smoking because some kids will find a way of getting cigarettes.

Social media and extended screen time is undoubtedly bad for children. However, all mainstream platforms offer parental controls where you can limit their access, their ability to talk to strangers, and monitor their activity. I’d encourage all parents to check how those controls work and implement them

Some parents supply their kids with cigarettes, does that mean we should have no age barrier for smoking?

Banning helps enforce the message that you SHOULD be restricting their use. There will always be parents who ignore the ban, just like there are parents who will by DC alcohol and cigarettes/vapes BUT for the majority it will help to have some officially rules behind it. If nothing else to help with the 'but everyone else is on it' argument.

My attitude is that SOME people will be impacted negatively by online toxic content, but not everyone.

Similarly, SOME people will develop issues with alcoholism, but not everyone.

Rather than banning all SM or all alcohol, shouldn't we be providing targeted support for those people who are negatively impacted.

It’s a waste of time. It takes seconds to install a VPN and that can be used to easily get around any ban.

Oh ok.

well, let’s not ban it then and let kids keep killing themsleves and let the mental health issues pile up.

Exactly! The binary nature of this debate isn't helping our kids right now. Today, while we're still arguing.
This is exactly why the work being done by Cambridge Mind Technologies feels so important to me. Rather than trying to remove young people from social media entirely, their platform works automatically with SM platforms to detect when a young person is engaging with harmful content and then delivers immediate, tailored psychological support to that user in the moment, before they spiral.
It's a more nuanced approach than an outright ban, and it reaches the young people who need help most, at precisely the moment they need it.
What frustrates my wife and me is that this kind of solution is barely getting a hearing. The SM firms don't want to acknowledge that their platforms cause harm, and the regulators seem locked into an all or nothing mindset. Meanwhile, teenagers are struggling right now.
Surely we can do better than waiting years for a ban that may never fully materialise?

Do you work for Cambridge Mind Technologies by any chance?

Can you link to the actual research papers that lie behind this technology and the approach to the problem? (Their website states that they are guided by Cambridge research, but don't give any details.)

@PorpoiseWithPurpose As I’m sure you know, that’s not what I meant. I’m saying this as a parent of teenagers. I’d happily see a world where children didn’t have access to social media at all.

But this so-called ban isn’t going to work, and we need to stop pretending it will. If we cling to the idea that it’s a solution, we’ll never bother to find one that actually is. And meanwhile adults get to sit back and congratulate themselves for ‘fixing’ the problem, while our children are still being harmed.

No I don't work for them (I'm a farmer), nor do I have details of their research papers, but you could ask them directly if you're interested?

But we were impressed when they did a workshop at our DD's school, and I have followed their progress in finding the logical middle ground in this debate, namely provide support to those being impacted, as the SM firms seem to be quite happy to let this harm continue while it's making then $$$$!

My concern is that a ban will require EVERYONE to have to submit their photo ID to (generally US) tech companies to verify they are of age.

I don't do anything nefarious online, but I don't feel comfortable putting my literal photo ID in the hands of companies backed by billionaires who side with Trump.

My worry is that 16 year olds will be catapulted overnight into a world of social media that they have no idea how to navigate and will make mistakes that were excusable at 13 but definitely not at 16. If that makes sense.

Very interesting point, that I have not heard before. Thank you.

I don't believe in this at all. More baldy designed digital tools to combat important problems. I am a senior professional in the digital industry (vague) and have been heavily involved in this environment for over 25 years, with a psychology degree and a couple of tech masters. You can't support teenagers with some app.

Plus these provisions hover up vulnerable people's sensitive data. Agencies like this have developed mental health apps that are all well promoted on SM, I nearly signed up for one but realised it would track a lot of personal and sensitive data. Absolute no from me.

What’s your solution then?

I don't know what the solution is.

But banning it hasn't worked here in Oz. The kids all still have social media accounts.

And a 16yo has more chance of managing to deal with harmful content than a 13yo. More chance of being interested in other real life things if they’ve not been on devices for years than the shite that is social media. Thing is, it’s not 13yo it’s 9yo and younger who are accessing platforms that were originally created for adult use.

Nothing has to stop 100% of kids to be effective.

Seatbelt laws don’t stop every road death. Age limits don’t stop every underage drinker. Speed limits don’t stop every speeder. But they still reduce harm significantly.

The goal of a social media ban is harm reduction, not perfection.

If it reduces usage by even 40 or 50%, that means:

• Fewer kids exposed to harmful content
• Less time spent in addictive scroll cycles
• Lower overall mental health risk
• A shift in social norms

Right now social media is the default. A ban flips that. It makes access harder, not easier. If platforms are no longer easily available, the majority will use them less or not at all.

You don’t judge a policy by whether it stops every single case. You judge it by whether it reduces harm at scale.

If we refused to introduce laws unless they were perfect, we wouldn’t have any laws at all.

The question isn’t “Will it stop every child?”
The question is “Will it reduce harm for many?”

And when the answer is YES, then it’s worth doing.

Yes- I think this could be disastrous. 16 year olds are a lot less susceptible to parental influence and are also gaining independence in other areas of their lives.

This will result in a situation where it is allegedly too dangerous for someone who is 15 and 365 days to even look at a Facebook post, but they can then access and post whatever they wish the next day, with no experience or guidance.

It is a bit like banning under 17s from even being a passenger in a car and then handing them the keys at 17 with no lessons!

The elephant in the room with all of this is smartphones…don’t let young children have a device where they can access it. If all their friends don’t have smartphones either then, it’s not what they’re all looking at on the way to and from, after school…

surely a ban just pushes it underground and impossible for parents to monitor. I saw an article interviewing Australian teens, and all were still using it.