My view is that the problem is being attacked from completely the wrong end. The onus is being put on the regulator, the parents and the kids themselves, when it should be on the service providers to provide a service that’s safe to use.
And does anyone really think a tech-savvy 15 year old who has been happily online for the past couple of years is going to accept being banned without a murmur? Or will they find a way around it to keep in touch with their slightly older mates who are not banned?
A secondary consideration. This can’t be made to work without potential users identities being known. Yet another tranche of personal data for the government to lose, confuse and misuse. They’ll probably hand it all to Palantir to play with.
I agree the onus should be on the service providers but they are not going to act responsibly that is glaringly obvious. Fining them is pointless as they are so wealthy it is meaningless. That leaves this approach and it has so many problems that it becomes almost entirely gestural.
They could fine or jail executives for breaches. I’m confident that the same would significantly reduce instances of water companies polluting our rivers.
They could but they won’t.
The world doesn’t work this way, I wish it did but it just doesn’t. Trying to make it work this way would of course enrich a select group of people in the legal profession but that’s about all.
Again, for what it’s worth, regulatory fines for big ticket compliance these days are typically linked to a percentage of global revenues (see: GDPR, Digital Services Act, etc). It’s a potentially vast amount of money in some cases, so they do typically work as a stick.
I don’t expect the tech platforms to simply ignore any legislation outputted by this announcement. What’s much more likely is that they’ll go to the US government, who will apply political pressure to prevent the regulation in the first place, and/or threaten to pull jobs and business from the UK.
I agree they won’t ignore it but they will fight it’s implementation by fair means and foul and in the meantime it will be business as usual. The genie is out of the bottle and it’s a very enriching genie. Do the wealthy like paying large fines? Of course they don’t but it’s written in, it’s irritating for them but the flow of money is so vast it’s not going to convince them to change their modus operandi. Criminal proceedings would probably be more sobering but good luck clicking handcuffs on Elon Musk’s wrists anytime soon. We can’t even put Baroness Mone and her wretched husband in the dock, hell we can’t even remove her undeserved title with anything approaching alacrity. Am I cynical? You betcha. I wonder why?
I don’t know any kids of the age concerned (though Mrs Gatz will speak to her secondary school teacher daughter later and could ask for some insights), but won’t it be like porn, when age verification was required but anyone who wanted to avoid it just shrugged and installed a free VPN with a couple of clicks? And as I understand it YouTube falls under the ban with, it seems to me, obvious educational disadvantages.
I’ve just spoken to her daughter myself, and her contribution is that a) Part of the aim is removing social media apps from children who might be bullied through them by removing that channel b) Briget Philipson is encouraging YouTube to set up an educational portal which would remove YouTube shorts, which I’m given to understand operates in a similar way to TikTok c) Most of her kids aren’t the tech wiz kids people my age like to imagine and are too thick to use VPNs d) Even when she was in her teens videos like Isis beheading videos would be passed around at school and things have got much worse since e) Everyone where she is in Manchester loves Andy Burnham (not relevant to this debate but I asked anyway because of where she lives).
The ban is a good way to teach kids techniques for bypassing firewalls and related obstructions IMHO (not that most can’t do this already).
It’s probably the right thing. Parents share a sense of responsibility though.
I’m a bit baffled as to how this has been allowed to be such an overarching problem. Are the parental controls for Android and Apple phones totally ineffective? I only had a quick look and any parent that wants to could block any app or website (I presume there’s a recommended black list).
It looks really easy to do. Do most parents not bother? If not, why not? Are adults in the UK about to be penalised because parents won’t take control of their child’s well being?
I think yes, most parents don’t bother. Or think it’s going to be complicated so they don’t bother trying.
There’s a derogatory term that was bandied about a bit in the later ’70s and ’80s.
“Techno-Peasants”.
I think that’s what a large proportion of Boomers and Gen-Xers and quite a few Millenials too could be unkindly classified as. Techno-Peasants. Politicians, police etc. too.
They want all that techy-stuff done for them. The Tech-Bros are happy to. Very happy, because they can do it to their advantage.
I believe parents find it difficult to insist because “everyone has it” where is it’s the law they can say “you can’t”. As every parent knows, kids have a highly developed sense of fairness and constant rows about something are horrible for everyone. Thankfully Twang Jr had no interest in it at all other than shouting at each other on the Xbox.
So, is it really as simple as that? The parents can’t be bothered so we all have to suffer?
Surely those parents that have been campaigning for a law change could be bothered, or it it really easier to campaign than to configure?
You can liberally add the word “some” throughout. Obviously I don’t know every parent. I’ve read it a few times in decent sources and it sounds plausible.
I don’t have kids and don’t know any under-16s, so I can’t say I’ve thought about this subject in any depth, but one thing has shocked me when reading about this issue: just how long some kids spend on social media.
The Times recently ran a feature looking at teens’ views regarding a potential ban, and one lad claimed he spent more than 5 hours a day watching TikTok videos. Even allowing for him maybe exaggerating to impress the journalist, that seems both ridiculous and pitiful. Five hours spent looking at other people’s short videos, every day? What can possibly be that interesting, and is his life away from the screen really that empty?
True, I’m in my 50s, have various commitments, and have to work, but I doubt I spend even 30 minutes a day looking at the net, and most of that would be spent here or on a couple of other hobby-based forums rather than your typical social media platforms.
Is 5 hours a day unusual, or are there millions of kids spending hour upon hour just watching videos? If so, a ban might be a positive step even if it just encourages some of them to do something more stimulating.
At that age I could easily have spent a similar amount of time in front of the TV every day, something which kids do vastly less now.
I do work, but still often find time to spend hours on the internet each day. The difference is, it isn’t just random scrolling, being fed things by an algorithm. I am actively seeking stuff out – very often I am finding it on the National Library of Scotland site.
It is the equivalent of playing whole albums rather than listening to the radio.
It’s a tricky one for sure. Our boy is 14 now. Mostly uses his social apps to hang out with friends while playing various video games. We live a little remotely so we do like the fact that he interacts with others as he’s an only child. His nearest close friend is about 15 miles away so we have to organize it for them to get together.
For whatever it’s worth…
I’m involved in the ongoing consultation around the proposed law change, and have a reasonable understanding of its likely shape and potential consequences. I also have two young teenagers. I would make the following observations:
* This is a highly complex issue with material risks on both sides to which no one currently has a good solution. Social media can be objectively harmful for kids, but we still don’t have a clean, simple way of age gating these services and others like them that doesn’t risk infringing on privacy/harming other businesses that end up swept along in the net.
* The secret hope of politicians and regulators is that AI will eventually provide some sort of silver bullet solution (you hear this from them a lot), but that day never seems to quite arrive. Our solutions at the moment are blunt force trauma, rather than careful surgery.
* This particular announcement has largely been political. The original consultation lasted three weeks and it was rush through out of necessity to try to score a win because the PM was in trouble.
* So is this actually an issue? Yes, a massive one. Social media has had a terrible effect on Western democracy, and created a world in which most adults are little more foolish and credulous than once they were. Try to imagine what the stuff does to the brain of a 14 year old, particularly short form video with a highly calibrated algorithm and a perfect dopamine loop.
* Is it all just the responsibility/fault of parents? This argument is frequently wheeled out, but it’s just as much magical thinking as the AI thing. I have two kids. Neither of them is on social media – a state of play that has taken a lot of careful monitoring and convincing. But there’s a clear social cost to not being on social media when the vast majority of their peers are living, socialising and communicating on those platforms. I also have to consider what happens when they hit 18 if they’ve had no exposure at all – it’s not as simple as “you can never have it”.
* On top of that, there is no “black list” and no clear blueprint for protecting your kids; it’s a constant recalibration. What happens when the group they’re in for a school project is using Pinterest to compile ideas? What happens (as was the case on Friday) when one of them comes to you because they’re part of an extra-curricular academic program which requires them to watch a science-related video on YouTube that the software you use to shield their phones is blocking? It’s not one move/decision, it’s a thousand of them, constantly, against a rapidly changing tech landscape and amidst the hurly burly of family life. And these are decisions that have not been faced by a previous generation and for which there are no simple answers. Eventually, you will get one or more wrong.
* Beyond the above, there will of course be parents who simply can’t be bothered to think about all this. Who don’t have the will/bandwidth to patrol whether a tech platform is forcing dozens of videos promoting eating disorders onto the phone of their 13 year old. And don’t those kids deserve some protection too? If there are drug dealers at the school gate, is it the job of parents to ensure their kids don’t interact, or the job of the school to disperse the dealers?
* I would caution against talking about “parents” in the generality. Every parent I know is thinking hard about how to manage this issue. Every parent has slightly different circumstances and a slightly different child. Cheap hand waving about the fecklessness of parents probably feels pretty good, but it’s a great example of how simple any problem is if it doesn’t impact you personally and you simply refuse to engage with it at any level of proper consideration.
* Is age verifying everyone who interacts with a user to user service anywhere on the internet the solution? It’s certainly not a good one. It puts yet another cache of high value data in either the hands of the government or some of the world’s least trustworthy companies. It will make the internet harder to use and it’s commercially and logistically toxic for any number of websites/businesses who are at no risk of harming a child. So – what’s the alternative?
* Will kids simply evade the ban? Again – yes, some of them. But that’s priced in – you’re not looking to stop all kids accessing these platforms, you’re just looking to stop enough. Statistically, it’s actually a pretty small proportion of people willing to jump through hoops to get what they want – the majority are easily deterred by the introduction of any sort of friction. It’s also a misconception that Gen Alpha is more technologically proficient than those that went before – they’re largely used to things working without having to tinker under the hood.
* The solution I’d like to see enacted doesn’t get us all the way home, but it would be a start. Revise our laws so that any social media platform which deploys a recommendation algorithm has the same legal liability as a publisher, rather than continuing to accept the defence that they are merely a “dumb pipe” akin to the telephone service. Algorithmic recommendation is an editorial decision, whether it’s made by human beings or not. If we create legal full liability for the content that’s being pushed, my bet is that the platforms in question would largely clean up their act more or less overnight. It leaves a bunch of other problems still in place, and it would have other knock on effects we’d need to carefully manage, but it at least puts the onus on the people responsible for the current mess to actually fix it – something they’ve demonstrated they simply will not do unless under duress.
* I’ll be interested to see whether we ever actually see the proposed ban. The removal of Starmer from office negates the immediate political driver which lead to the announcement, and I wonder if the pushback will have given Burnham pause to consider whether he’d prefer to expend his own capital elsewhere.
Just my tuppence.
It’s a good tuppence – probably a few quid (in the nicest possible way).
It’s not going to be one thing that sorts it out but a large number of things. The platforms, the users, the advertisers, governments all have some skin in the game.
I like the start you suggest. The internet wants to be regulated like a telecoms service. It isn’t. They provide (and benefit from running) a publishing empire. So treat them the same.
I thought we’d been through the ‘you’re a publisher, not just a platform’ thing some time ago, after all it was very much the stick with which the early torrent sites were beaten bloody. Yet despite the hoo-hah, many of them are still fully functioning, so would it be any different if the same approach was applied to the ‘socials’, or would it just amount to another virtue-signalling exercise with limited long term effect?
The distinction is algorithmic recommendation, which is a feature of most large social media platforms, but which was not generally a feature of torrenting sites, and which the law changes proposed above would target.
If you want to passively enable users to share content then fair enough, but if you start directing traffic then you should bear responsibility for the consequences.
Instagram, to give but one example, had a policy of actively directing content promoting eating disorders to teenage girls who had recently deleted a selfie. It doesn’t seem unfair to suggest they should be accountable for the outputs of that policy. Active versus passive.
In terms of effect, you never know where a law change will take you, but I advise companies of this type on these laws and I would be extremely surprised if the creation of an additional legal liability around algorithmic recommendation did not lead, at the absolute minimum, to materially greater care being take with algorithmic recommendation.
Like I say, just my tuppence, for whatever it’s worth.
Thanks for the example – I had no idea that any provider had implemented quite such an insidious, grossly unacceptable algorithmic behaviour as you describe. How on earth did anyone discover the existence of such a detailed tactical policy? I had imagined that providers – with bottomless pockets for legal fees – had ways and means of hiding such things.
No worries at all.
My understanding is that it’s largely been uncovered by whistleblowers (e.g. Frances Haugen), investigative journalists and evidence given under subpoena.
There are numerous other examples. The most high profile in this country is obviously Molly Russell, who was 14 when she took her own life in 2017. In the preceding six months 2,100 of 16,300 pieces of content she had interacted with on Instagram were on topics such as self-harm, depression, and suicide. Once the algorithm noticed she was interested in these topics, it fed her more. The child psychiatrist who reviewed the materials in question as part of the inquest following Molly’s death said he couldn’t sleep at night afterwards.
In my experience, most large, profitable companies tend to shoot for at least a bare minimum of legal compliance (there are exceptions, but they’re few and far between). It would certainly be unusual to be asked to advise on how best to break the law, and I think most lawyers would refuse to do so.
The really serious problems tend to arrive when companies can find and exploit loopholes that remove any incentive to act responsibly, as in this instance, and particularly where there’s a lot of money to be paid. That and lobbying to create and maintain the loopholes in the first place.
Corporations are motivated by the profit motive, rather than by morality. In areas where that leads to public harms they need to have morality imposed upon them by effective, carefully targeted regulation. The system breaks down when the regulation doesn’t keep up.
Completely agree. It’s a shame that there is a tendency to confuse any attempt to ‘impose upon them’ as an act of government interference. Some folk don’t seem to appreciate the function of law, or even that law flows from government action.
Well said, same in Canada from right wing loons about the Liberals “controlling our lives” when asked to fill in a census form (which is nothing to do with the government)
For. Very much so.
I’ve just retired from that industry- partly because the introduction of AI to everything is making the internet even worse than it already was. Targeting the reader with irresistible marketing, including political messaging. Since I’ve left, I can feel my brain being sucked out of my eyeballs by it. I’m buying stuff I don’t need to make music nobody hears.
I’m 59, what hope is there for under 16s?
This appears to be modelled on what Australia introduced not that long ago.
Similar naysaying comments abound here.
Not all kids will just find a way around it or install a VPN.
This may not work very well or at all, but doing nothing doesn’t seem a great idea.
As a parent of twenty-something offsprings, who went through much grief (two cases with the rozzers, neither resulted in a prosecution), I wish this had come in a decade or more ago.
I can still recall the massive 2AM meltdown after I confiscated a phone for the second or third time that night. “You want to leave? Fine. The next bus isn’t for four hours, but give me five minutes to get dressed and I’ll drive you into Cambridge.”
It’s really difficult to have a “zero use” policy, and avoid being a total hypocrite, when I’ve met some many lovely people online (including some of you lot).
Strewth you’ve been busy – more than 20 kids? Save the planet, keep it in your trousers!
I’m not Bojo!
100% behind it. I have an 8 year old & 10 year old & you would be staggered by how many in their classes already have smartphones with whatsapp & TikTok etc.
We have told both they can have a dumb phone when they start secondary school, but that will just be it. We are already seeing friends of our 10 year old being omitted from whatsapp groups & all the hassle this brings, so not having it as an option feels the best way for us & at the moment she is on board.
Some parents we know in the have been complaining about what is shared on these groups & I can’t help thinking that if they are giving their child unfettered access it is the risk! At this age we should be protecting them from this so it’s hard to have sympathy. We can’t expect the levels of maturity needed from a 10 year old to have this access so it has to be parented
Both me & my partner are not on any social media any more & feel better for not being. We have spoken to both of our children about why we aren’t (could not take seeing any more racist posts from nobbers I used to work/go to school with!) & limit our own time on our phones to try & model a healthy relationship with this stuff, but it is not easy.
Although I wish the ban went further (ideally it would just be the start of a major rowing back on how we ALL use this stuff), this makes it easier to parent. We are fully prepared for our children hating us & feeling they are missing out on things, but we are hoping that overall the balance is right, but time will tell.
I’m not a fan of Robbie Williams, but his take on this was spot on i think
“I’m 51. I can’t deal with the corrosive nature of the internet, it hurts me, it ruins my day.
How can I give this drug to a 12-year-old? How can I give this drug to a seven-year-old? It’s abuse.”
I work in a junior school . The amount of shite we get from parents complaining of what’s going on on their little darlings WhatsApp Groups is unbelievable. To clarify, these WhatsApp Groups are set up outside of school. …
Talking of teaching, I’ve just this minute ordered the book (Un)educated: My Life as a Teacher, and Why You Should Never Become One by Francis Foster. Looks interesting.
It was the same for me when I worked in 6th form. Older kids are by no means immune, and these were the ones who would have qualified for A levels and would end up at decent universities. The completely unrealistic expectations of parents upon us to police this (and in other areas too) was just one of the reasons I decided to retire early.
I think it is a good thing because it establishes an accepted culture and norm for social media use, both for under 16s and for those older to look to our own use. It is a leaky sieve for sure, but I think peer group feelings can be helpful as well as negative. If you have good friends and role models around who don’t spend loads of time doomscrolling, you are less inclined to yourself.
Both my daughters have iPads – one was given one by her school during Covid, we bought the younger one a second, so they both had the same opportunity to use them, and so there wasn’t jealousy between them. When our older daughter had been at secondary school for a year, she was bought a Samsung. In the German system, both get lessons on internet safety in their different schools. That was very helpful in educating them about the various risks of the internet. Also, one was given the Jonathan Heidt book “The Amazing Generation” about managing your personal use of the internet and both read and enjoyed it.
There are times when each of them will spend long periods on their beds watching German children’s TV series, and when asked about it, they will recognize that it isn’t a good use of their time, in fact that it swallows their time. They know its something they have to fight against and it’s up to them to manage their time. Both my wife and I do things with them in our free time, so that they have alternative options, and they both do have their hobbies and interests. But we all get tired, and sometimes it’s comforting to switch off and watch.
I find it interesting what Bingo says above about social media platforms deploying recommendation algorithms. That for me is the devious part of playing direct to the limbic system. If there was or were social platform(s) that consciously set out not to ‘guide’ the user to other sources and feeds in a downward spiral of ever-reducing /polarising content, I wonder if they might take off as ‘ethical’ alternatives. Give enough plurality of choices and the consumer can voter with their swipes and clicks, as was seen to an extent with the move from X to Bluesky. I tend to think that you better combat ferocious hardy weeds by adding more diverse and healthy alternatives, not just by constantly hacking at them to reduce any internet life at all.
100% against. It won’t work anyway. And it’s a bad idea. Parents and companies should be held accountable. Really the government should stop interfering and banning stuff, they’ve got form for this
Who holds the companies accountable though if it isn’t the Governments?
It only takes a moment’s thought to identify plenty of things that a government – one on top form anyway – should legitimately interfere with, or even ban if necessary.
But surely if this is implemented it will put more onus on the parents to be accountable. There has to be a bit of push & pull.
What else have this government interfered & banned out of interest?
Pro-Palestinian protestors?
Drink-driving? Seatbelts? Smoking in pubs?
Vans. Rats. Doorknobs. Birds. Heights. Open spaces. Confined spaces. Footballs. Bicycles. Cows.
Careful now. Down with this sort of thing.
I think the content is a bit of a red herring. It’s the phones themselves that are to blame more than anything else. You only have to see kids walking to and from school to realise that the mere act of glancing down at a phone is a serious addiction. It becomes a way of avoiding social interaction and those who wear headphones at the same time seem to be on a death wish, simply walking out into traffic. Sometimes a group of them will come into the pub on Thursdays (my Wetherspoons fish and chips day), and they will sit around a table, with every single one at them continuing to stare into their phones. In years to come people will have almost no memories of their day-to-day lives, because all their experiences will have been lived inside an electronic bubble. My nephew was unable to find his way home once, when his mother was unable to pick him up. It was only a mile away, yet he’s spent every journey looking into his phone and he never even glanced out of the window to see where he was. Some people make light of it, but I think they have become a real heroin-grade addiction, with terrible future consequences.
The apps to access the content all come ready to use along with the tech, so I suppose there’s some blame to be laid there, but I think the content is the prime reason the tech gets to be addictive of itself.
Phones etc. being sold without any of the social media apps preinstalled might be a good idea. The instant availability of the apps acts as encouragement to lessen or abandon direct social interaction for those who are finding it tricky.
They make it appear just as easy (at first) to interact indirectly. By the time the initial ease has been eroded, once you have interacted to a sufficient extent, the hooks are in and direct interaction seems more complicated than indirect because direct is not so predictable. The algorithms and the way you are targeted carry you along a path that seems predictable. And insecure people like predictability.