We need an honest reckoning with other factors that threaten young people’s wellbeing, from poverty to academic stress
Our children’s feelings are not for sale, and nor are they to be manipulated.
So said Emmanuel Macron this week, after French lawmakers voted to ban under-15s from social media. Admittedly, he then repeated these sentiments in a post on X, in the time-honoured manner of parents solemnly lecturing children to do as we say, not as we do.
Yet Macron is not wrong. The backlash building up against social media now is unmistakable, as guilt over all those hours wasted scrolling meets growing alarm at the ugly and dystopian world big tech has helped create. Only last week the Labour MP Jess Asato, a government adviser on violence against women, described how an X user had created an AI-generated video of her being chloroformed and prepared for rape. Who wants their 14-year-old daughter hanging out somewhere that happens? Though teens mostly prefer TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat to X, it’s the grim excesses of the platform under Elon Musk that have shaken many adults out of complacency.
Parents are beguiled by tales of Australian kids rediscovering bike rides and board games, after under-16s were banned from social media just in time for the antipodean summer. Teachers sick of dealing with the fallout from adolescent social media beef, or the inevitable after-effects of kids staying up all night on their phones, want action. The surest sign of which way Labour winds are blowing, meanwhile, is that the health secretary, Wes Streeting, recently invited the pro-ban campaigning author Jonathan Haidt in to address officials, while the thwarted leadership hopeful Andy Burnham suggests a crackdown makes sense to him. Yet Downing Street has hesitated, leaving Kemi Badenoch to take advantage, for once, of an open goal. The Conservatives have amended the children’s wellbeing and schools bill going through the House of Lords in order to put the idea of a ban on the table, and will use an opposition day debate this Wednesday to hammer their point home, somewhat awkwardly for Labour MPs who broadly agree with the idea but don’t want to see the Tories take the credit.
