Last week we published an argument for why social media bans for under-16s might be a bad idea, and a few people got in touch to tell us they didn’t think much of it.
Thinkbox CEO Lindsey Clay wrote a response, which we also published.
The article was written by one of MediaCat’s reporters, but I edited it, and I think it would be helpful to explain why I stand by it.
MediaCat UK’s official stance is that we are on the side of the media industry in general but we are not beholden to anyone within it.
I thought the writer made clear in the piece that she was not expressing sympathy for specific platforms, but the comments we received suggest that it could have been clearer.
So, for the avoidance of doubt, Meta, TikTok, X and YouTube neither need nor deserve sympathy. They already operate with an unfair advantage over broadcasters and publishers because they can profit from the content they host without investing in or bearing much responsibility for it. I don’t know exactly when a social media company should stop being classed as a carrier and start being treated like a publisher, but the existing definitions simply don’t work.
The other red thread linking the complaints we received was that there was simply no good reason for the article to exist. What is being criticised, wrote Clay, is ‘not the idea of social media, but the business models and design choices that have allowed harm to trample on responsibility.’
I think this misses the point. The law implemented in Australia, from which other countries are now taking inspiration, bans under-16s from using any service whose main purpose is to enable online social interaction, allow user-to-user interaction, and permit content posting. People may not be criticising the idea of social media, but that is precisely what is being legislated against.
For better or for worse, a lot of life is now lived online, and we should only countenance blanket restrictions on young people’s access to that world with good reason, and as our reporter’s article argued, the evidence for whether social media is harmful to young people at the population level is mixed, at best.
To reiterate, I would lose precisely zero sleep if under-16s could no longer log on to Facebook or Instagram or X. I just care how a ban is implemented. By all means, legislate against algorithms and features that keep users hooked on platforms by encouraging anger and insecurity. But arguing that we should curtail online social interaction more widely is, on the basis of current evidence, disproportionate. And it is no disrespect to the young people who have suffered because of social media platforms to call that a panic.
