AIBU to think the social media ban will be impossible to enforce?

[Viviennemary]

I'm not totally against this ban on social media for under 16's. but I don't see how it can be enforced. It's on BBC news now. One boy spent 14 hours a day. Another girl 9 hours. Crazy.

I mean, at least they’re giving it a go eh? What would you suggest?

yeah of course it will. I don’t technically have an issue with it but it isn’t fair that some in the school year have access and others don’t. It could lead to bullying as the older kids can post about younger kids who won’t know. It should have been done by school year and not absolute age .

Killing people is illegal, but people still do it, every day - doesn’t mean we give up and legalise it.

I think parents could possibly have a hand in policing it, if it’s not too much trouble.

It will be difficult but need not be.

Just as with the construction industry, have some personal liability. Or in extreme cases of not complying, the courts have the power to block the platform temporarily.

Neither will happen, and Ofcom are useless and 'gone native', so your concern is valid.

So you are partially against it? Why? No change that’s worth making is easy, people have to try and start somewhere though

Exactly. Always some people who are negative by default I suppose.

The feckless parents who let their 9 year olds have tiktok because ’saying no is too hard’ will just do the age verification then hand the account to their kid. Meanwhile the government must be absolutely ecstatic that they got people to swallow this ploy so they can finally link names and addresses to TwiX accounts saying hurty words about trans people and saying other stuff they don’t want people to say. And meanwhile people in China etc who depend on connecting to the UK (the UK often has the most reliable VPN connection) for some semblance of free speech will now be shut out from SM on account of having the wrong kind of ID. Which makes me wonder who really lobbied for this and why.

Yeh, good luck with that judging by the Facebook comments I’ve just been reading!!

Loads of people thinking they’re being clever by saying they’ll just do x, y and z to navigate it for their kids!

The biggest issue I have with this government is that they are super reactive rather than proactive and things tend to be ill thought out when they pass these things. It isn’t that the intentions aren’t good and if they had consulted and got opinions on it they might have come up with a better solution.
bringing in a ban on older children accessing it at 15 when they have had it all their life is going to lead to them being the early adopters of finding a way around it. I would have introduce a ban for all year 7s and below starting this September so you bring it in gradually

they haven’t said what happen about student resources. My daughter is older now so not affected but she used a huge amount of teaching resources on you tube. If this had been her I’d have just sent up an account on a phone connected to me and so she could access it so ultimately getting around the ban. if she ends up watching cat videos as well then so be it.

and my point above about I think it’s a bullies charter waiting to happen. I think it’s a major risk for those born in July/aug rather than than earlier in the year.

I just wish the government gave more thought to these things.

I don't think it will be impossible to enforce IF parents support it. We have to do something, as the kids are not alright.

Just another half arsed attempted by the government.

I don’t think they actually think things through because they don’t have a brain cell between them.

It’s like the smart phone ban at schools…where the school require homework to be completed on an app which needs a smart device.

Shit parents are still going to be shit parents and it won’t do much.

I support it and think it will be interesting to see how successful it is.

I think schools and students can manage it themselves e.g. using social pressure to encourage the whole year group to stay off it. It also gives them more impetus to not allow mobiles in the classroom.

I remember thinking the same thing about the smoking ban, but thats worked out pretty much OK. Its going to take time to change things and we have to start somewhere, because this isnt working.

It will also lead to more widespread roll out of smart phones without social media but with educational apps.

I do support it overall but also believe it’s going to be hard to properly enforce and will be interesting to see how much difference is makes long term.
I wonder if it just pushes the problem further down the line. Adults get addicted to social media and they probably didn’t have until they were already in their 20s or 30s.
Hopefully it’s a good thing.

And IF parents had properly supported it and done their jobs, this would never have been necessary. Who is paying for the phones and internet connections/monthly plans for the U16s?

Things generally work much better when privileges and facilities are removed from those who prove they cannot be trusted with them, rather than from everybody. If you had a child in nursery who was whacking the other kids around the head with the toys, rather than playing with them nicely, would the nursery just ban all toys for all of the children? Makes as much sense.

And why on earth have they deviously piggybacked YouTube in with the social media websites? Linear TV is on borrowed time and likely will be a thing of the past within a few years - they're actually banning children from watching television, including educational programmes that are actually made for children.

It will just be cat and mouse anyway. The well-known (and ironically slightly more accountable) sites may be banned, but then new ones will spring up to take their place - and each time laws go through Parliament to ban them, there will be more waiting in the wings to take their place. In effect, this will be as pointless as banning teenagers in 2026 from using Friends Reunited, MySpace or BeBo.

This is how I see it too.

Love it as an idea, if it could be foolproof I think it would be amazing, but I do think it will be difficult to enforce. I remember them interviewing teens in Australia after the ban had come in and they all had work arounds😂

I think the smoking ban is entirely different. Although lots of adults legally enjoy smoking (although I bet far more of them wish they'd never actually started), it's widely acknowledged as a thoroughly negative pursuit.

In stark contrast, the internet is just media and thus neutral. It can be used for immensely great things, extremely bad things or anywhere in between - just the same as a volume of beautiful inspirational poetry, a printed book full of solidly approved great advice for suffering people that can transform their lives and a paperback edition of Mein Kampf are all equally books... would we therefore seek to allow all books, ban all books, or would we be a lot more intelligent and less robotic about how we approach it?

By way of analogy, what they've done now would be the equivalent of, say, banning men from smoking in public but not women; or maybe anybody earning over £40K is allowed to blow nasty, stinky smoke into the faces of everybody else in pubs and restaurants, but those who earn less are completely banned.

I think the ship has already sailed for current teenagers and many will find their way around the ban.
But as the parent of a 9 and 7 year old it gives me some hope for their teenage years. We already told them we won’t be allowing social media / smart phones until older than most of their peers but this gives us a bit of back up and hopefully there will be more parents who feel the same.

I see it as more for the generation to come rather than those already addicted.

Or maybe nip it in the bud as soon as your kid starts whining that “it’s not fair”. Pathetic 😅

My kids aren’t allowed social media. The vast majority of my 15 year olds mates have Snapchat but he doesn’t. He understands and if he were to start whinging that “it wasn’t fair” he’d know about it.

This is entirely the result of parents choosing not to parent.

Lots of things are hard to enforce. How many people here had fake ID, or an older friend buying alcohol. Doesn’t mean a minimum age to buy alcohol isn’t worth having, just because it’s not that hard to get around.

Called parenting

It’s the same for alcohol/going out to places that ID - my close friends turned 18 a few months before me. Everyone copes with that just fine. Same for driving as well. And sex (also hard to enforce). Loads of things are absolute age based and not massively easy to enforce.

One point that I think has been ignored in this is the potential risks with a 'cliff-edge' age whereby you're suddenly allowed to do something.

Take alcohol, for example, how many Brits turn 18, discover that they have completely free legal access to as much alcohol as they can get their hands on, and then make very bad - often far-reaching decisions as a result? Compare that with France, where children and young people are brought up responsibly around alcohol - so they don't suddenly hit a certain age and are effectively sent away to fill their boots until their eyes bleed?

IF this works, and we do see much better mental health amongst some 13-15yos, how can we know that 16yos - who will then be new to the world of social media - will be magically just fine?