Daniel Dieppe is a researcher for the think tank Civitas.
To ban or not to ban, that is the question.
At least it appears to be, if you read the newspapers.
Headlines are full of gossip about the Prime Minister potentially performing yet another screeching U-turn and banning social media for children aged under 16, ostensibly to ‘secure his legacy’ before yet another knifing at the top of British politics.
The Prime Minister’s legacy aside, the case for a ban is a strong one. Recently Keir Starmer met with bereaved parents who have lost children to online harm. They told him that, ‘like any other faulty product causing the deaths of children, it should be restricted until the companies responsible have fixed it and proven it is safe.’
More news came from The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, which now calls for doctors to ‘routinely screen for harms’ related to social media. Half of the doctors they surveyed reported that at least once a week, they treat a child for mental distress or physical harm from online content. Social media, Wes Streeting told us, ‘should be treated like tobacco – it’s extremely addictive, bad for our health, and big tech is borrowing the big tobacco playbook to avoid regulation.’
A full-blown ban, however, is like asking the Government to run before it can walk.
Only one other country in the world has ever attempted such a drastic measure — Australia — and with limited success so far. Early evidence suggests at least 60 per cent of Australian children are evading the ban, apparently because of a lack of tough age checks.
This is not to say a ban is a bad idea (I personally am in favour), but that the British state hasn’t even got its basics right. As a new Civitas report by my colleague Danna Brown explores, we are one of very few developed countries yet to issue full national guidance on screen time to parents. Even in our era of never-ending state paralysis, this is a rather startling dereliction of duty.
The closest we’ve come to issuing guidance was a brief ‘commentary’ from the United Kingdom’s Chief Medical Officer seven years ago, which concluded there was not enough ‘clear evidence’ for a link between social media and mental health problems. It advised a precautionary approach for parents, and has made about as much difference as church bells in a thunderstorm.
Our curriculum reforms are also badly behind.
The integration of digital literacy into the curriculum, which won’t even tackle social media addiction, will only be taught from September 2028. Finland, by marked contrast, enacted similar changes to their school system in 2014, and has ranked first in Europe for resilience to digital misinformation for several years in a row.
The Netherlands perhaps make for the most pragmatic case study, as the Government has successfully collaborated with civil society groups like the Dutch equivalent of Smartphone Free Childhood. The Government could easily endorse and collaborate with these groups to give parents more power over big tech, but it has failed to do so. A civil society led approach could be far more powerful than aggressive regulation.
Even France is ahead of the game. Their ‘Studer Law’ requires all devices with an operating system and app store to include pre-installed parental controls, available at the point of activation, something 22 per cent of British parents are not aware of.
This sort of mild introductory regulation is easily within our grasp, but instead we routinely compare ourselves to Australia, by far the most extreme example.
It’s a bit like comparing one outlier with another: we are missing the bigger picture. While Britain is unusual for its complete lack of action, Australia is unusual for the amount of action it has taken.
Admittedly, Australia does make for the most interesting case study from a neutral perspective, but it’s hardly the most pragmatic or effective. A blanket ban in Britain would no doubt come under intense scrutiny, years of wrangling, and perhaps a judicial review, like Australia has with Reddit. It was not in the recently given King’s speech, and faces a shorter Parliamentary timetable, along with the difficulty of potentially surviving a new Prime Minister with different interests.
Once enacted, there are further fears that tech companies like Meta or TikTok could simply refuse to supply their services to anyone until the Government backs down. Ministers apparently don’t believe voters would back them in a fight against Silicon Valley. And let’s not forget that the Government’s consultation on this matter just received more responses than any other for 14 years, showing the scale of entrenched perspectives of privacy vs child safety.
While an Australia-style ban should probably be our end goal, our myopic-like view on the matter is yet another example of Britain’s painful parochialism stifling important political debate. By all means, introduce social media regulation, but let’s walk before we can run.
Daniel Dieppe is a researcher for the think tank Civitas.
To ban or not to ban, that is the question.
At least it appears to be, if you read the newspapers.
Headlines are full of gossip about the Prime Minister potentially performing yet another screeching U-turn and banning social media for children aged under 16, ostensibly to ‘secure his legacy’ before yet another knifing at the top of British politics.
The Prime Minister’s legacy aside, the case for a ban is a strong one. Recently Keir Starmer met with bereaved parents who have lost children to online harm. They told him that, ‘like any other faulty product causing the deaths of children, it should be restricted until the companies responsible have fixed it and proven it is safe.’
More news came from The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, which now calls for doctors to ‘routinely screen for harms’ related to social media. Half of the doctors they surveyed reported that at least once a week, they treat a child for mental distress or physical harm from online content. Social media, Wes Streeting told us, ‘should be treated like tobacco – it’s extremely addictive, bad for our health, and big tech is borrowing the big tobacco playbook to avoid regulation.’
A full-blown ban, however, is like asking the Government to run before it can walk.
Only one other country in the world has ever attempted such a drastic measure — Australia — and with limited success so far. Early evidence suggests at least 60 per cent of Australian children are evading the ban, apparently because of a lack of tough age checks.
This is not to say a ban is a bad idea (I personally am in favour), but that the British state hasn’t even got its basics right. As a new Civitas report by my colleague Danna Brown explores, we are one of very few developed countries yet to issue full national guidance on screen time to parents. Even in our era of never-ending state paralysis, this is a rather startling dereliction of duty.
The closest we’ve come to issuing guidance was a brief ‘commentary’ from the United Kingdom’s Chief Medical Officer seven years ago, which concluded there was not enough ‘clear evidence’ for a link between social media and mental health problems. It advised a precautionary approach for parents, and has made about as much difference as church bells in a thunderstorm.
Our curriculum reforms are also badly behind.
The integration of digital literacy into the curriculum, which won’t even tackle social media addiction, will only be taught from September 2028. Finland, by marked contrast, enacted similar changes to their school system in 2014, and has ranked first in Europe for resilience to digital misinformation for several years in a row.
The Netherlands perhaps make for the most pragmatic case study, as the Government has successfully collaborated with civil society groups like the Dutch equivalent of Smartphone Free Childhood. The Government could easily endorse and collaborate with these groups to give parents more power over big tech, but it has failed to do so. A civil society led approach could be far more powerful than aggressive regulation.
Even France is ahead of the game. Their ‘Studer Law’ requires all devices with an operating system and app store to include pre-installed parental controls, available at the point of activation, something 22 per cent of British parents are not aware of.
This sort of mild introductory regulation is easily within our grasp, but instead we routinely compare ourselves to Australia, by far the most extreme example.
It’s a bit like comparing one outlier with another: we are missing the bigger picture. While Britain is unusual for its complete lack of action, Australia is unusual for the amount of action it has taken.
Admittedly, Australia does make for the most interesting case study from a neutral perspective, but it’s hardly the most pragmatic or effective. A blanket ban in Britain would no doubt come under intense scrutiny, years of wrangling, and perhaps a judicial review, like Australia has with Reddit. It was not in the recently given King’s speech, and faces a shorter Parliamentary timetable, along with the difficulty of potentially surviving a new Prime Minister with different interests.
Once enacted, there are further fears that tech companies like Meta or TikTok could simply refuse to supply their services to anyone until the Government backs down. Ministers apparently don’t believe voters would back them in a fight against Silicon Valley. And let’s not forget that the Government’s consultation on this matter just received more responses than any other for 14 years, showing the scale of entrenched perspectives of privacy vs child safety.
While an Australia-style ban should probably be our end goal, our myopic-like view on the matter is yet another example of Britain’s painful parochialism stifling important political debate. By all means, introduce social media regulation, but let’s walk before we can run.