I must confess, I am something of a smartphone addict.
I wake up, and my first instinct is to roll over and check my phone. I take no pleasure in admitting such a fact. I have tried to wean myself off of such technology. Locking my phone away in a drawer, changing the colour scheme to be only black and white and even installing one of those apps that prevents you from opening your phone (this particular one had little trees that you could grow – how cute).
They were all worthy adversaries, it must be admitted. They put up a valiant effort in the battle for my attention span. But they could not compete with my dopamine-driven addiction.
I imagine that the picture I have painted is one that many readers may also experience. Smartphone usage, and particularly social media usage, is so embedded in our daily lives that we cannot live without it. It has, by definition, become an addiction.
Now, some may parrot the line that such an addiction is harmless. It distracts us for a short while, and prevents us from living in the moment, yes, but it is not actually harmful.
But I’d argue that this addiction is not benign. It is inherently harmful, and we need only look at the data to prove this.
Take the research published by the World Health Organisation in 2024. It highlights that social media usage, particularly amongst young people, leads to “depression, bullying, anxiety and poor academic performance.” Hardly a vindicating account on the effects of social media.
Yet this is not an isolated incident. An article published by the National Library of Medicine in 2017 made the empirical case against social media usage for young people. It found that for every additional hour of social media use amongst young teens, there is a 13 per cent increase in the risk of depression. Social media usage contributed to a 33 per cent increase in depressive symptoms among test subjects, and recorded visits to university counselling services for mental health issues increased by 30 per cent.
With such bleak statistics, it may puzzle some to find that I am strongly opposed to a blanket social media ban for under 16s. I feel the need to clarify that this stance is not rooted in some psychopathic instinct that aims to harm young people at every opportunity – I am not that cruel.
No, I am opposed to a blanket ban for two main reasons. The first reason concerns practicality. The second reason concerns fundamental conservative philosophy.
On the issue of practicality, keen ConservativeHome readers will have picked up on a piece by Andrew Gilligan yesterday, which addressed this very problem. Andrew discusses Australia’s social media ban for children as a case study, highlighting that the vast majority of youngsters simply kept their online accounts or found workarounds. The methods of such workarounds were rather predictable. Installing VPNs, lying about one’s age, creating fake accounts, or migrating to alternative platforms not covered by the ban were all methods that were employed by Australia’s tech-savvy teens. Indeed, evidence showed that on the day that the ban was introduced, alternative social media apps such as Yope and Lemon8 saw a huge increase in downloads, as youngsters sought ways to circumvent the ban.
What this all showed, evidently so, was that the social media ban in Australia did not work.
Now, I expect that some readers will push back here, arguing that practical concerns are irrelevant, and that we, as conservatives, have a moral duty to protect those who cannot protect themselves.
I understand such a critique, but to these critics, I would posit a simple question: are we not conservatives because we see the world as it is, rather than as we wish it to be?
We accept the limitations and constraints of reality and create policy accordingly. A social media ban is no different. If the evidence shows that a ban is unenforceable (and it does) then pursuing a ban is a meaningless, expensive and time-consuming endeavour which we know will inevitably fail.
But putting practicalities to one side, my deeper concern is on conservative philosophy, and how a ban such as this is fundamentally unconservative.
We as conservatives believe in limited government, individual liberty and the belief that parents – not the government – know what is best for their child. A blanket ban on social media which is directly enforced by the state does not reflect such values. Instead, it reflects a pervasive belief that is ever present in Whitehall: that a civil servant knows what is best for a child, rather than that child’s parents.
A real conservative approach would recognise this, and offer an alternative which allows parents and education providers to decide for themselves what is best for their children. Schools and parents know young people far better than anyone in central government ever could.
Were a school to decide that a total smartphone ban is what is best for its pupils, then I would welcome such a decision. If another opted for a more targeted approach, permitting students to use certain elements of their phone whilst at school, then I would welcome that too. It may be easy to point the finger of inconsistency at such an argument, but such a charge would be false. This is not inconsistency, it is subsidiarity. The “principle that a central authority should not be very powerful, and should only control things which cannot be controlled by local organisations.” This principle would be one that the Conservative Party would do well to remember.
And it is because of this that I have been so perplexed over our party’s support for a blanket social media ban in recent times, with some in the party proudly proclaiming that it is a “no brainer.”
To those in the party that believe this to be the right course of action, I ask that you remember this: One of the reasons the electorate ejected us from office in 2024 was that we were a fundamentally unconservative party. Repeatedly, we talked right but governed left. And so, as we attempt to show a renewed face for 2029, and to show the British public that we are the only small-c conservative party, to take such an unconservative stance on such an important issue is unwise.
Credit where credit is due, I have championed our leader, the party and its proposals on a number of issues. But, much like a good friend, I feel the need to call out the party when I believe it is veering off course. When it is losing track of what makes it a conservative party.
This, I believe, is one such occasion.