To SM or not to SM…

Social Media is in the news in the U.K. again. The Government has introduced legislature to ban social media for all under 16s, starting from Spring 2027. Australia paved the way for this, but now many other countries are joining in and looking at either banning or severely curtailing social media use for teenagers¹. Note I’m not talking about countries² where there are outright bans on social media for everyone, just teenagers.

So, noble idea, or deeply flawed?

Feedback from Australia suggests the ban is not having much affect yet, with 7 in 10 children still using social media platforms⁴ and that the ban is difficult to enforce. I’m not surprised by that, and I can’t find anything in any of the press releases about what the actual penalty will be for teenagers using social media once the ban comes in.

Is that becuase the powers that be know this is going to be incredibly difficult to enforce? Is it because this is a good idea, being rushed through without thinking things through? Which platforms are to be included in the ban has not been finalised yet, but given many teenagers think Facebook is for old people, X is for fascists and ‘what the fuck is Bluesky?’, banning those is going to be met with a collective shrug.

Snapchat is probably the most insidious of the lot. Disappearing messages mean children can be bullied mercilessly without any proof, unless the one being bullied is amazingly quick at screenshots. Snapchat have taken steps to improve its platform, so gone are the ‘top friends’⁵ lists, but I literally found the settings to make my messages disappear with a one line search. Let me just tell that kid how much I hate him, and the message will disappear – hurrah!⁶

I think the proposed ban is a decent idea, but it is perhaps targeting the wrong people. Why not target the companies and get them to change Social Media back to what it was originally intended for. I joined Facebook back in 2007, shortly after I moved to Devon. It was a way to keep in touch with my friends in London, and it worked brilliantly. When I logged in this morning, 4 of my first 5 posts were adverts, 5 of 6 if you count the ‘people you may know⁷‘ category.

What’s that all about? If I want adverts, I’ll put ITV on. Fuck off Facebook. How about this as a solution, and apply it to all social media: no news, no adverts, just friends chatting. Surely this would solve the problem of fake news or people getting ripped off for products that look nothing like their adverts⁸. Surely this would put the ‘social’ back into SM. I often get posts for things that happened three or four days ago⁹.

Bans take a long time for effects to be felt. In the short run, kids will keep using SM and those who do computer science and know how to set up a VPN¹⁰ will suddenly be the cool kids. I really think we should be looking at the companies and their algorithms and holding them to a higher account.

I just mentioned no news and I think this is essential. Kids are getting political news from TikTok in short bursts, which is hardly enough to get into a complex issue, like why Trump is such a fuckgibbon or why Farage is not a ‘man of the people’ despite how many fake photos of him drinking in a pub he publishes¹¹. Anything posted on SM as ‘news’ should have verified sources with it, and not just ‘my mate down the pub’ or ‘I’ve done my research’. No messages that disappear. No messages from someone you haven’t made a connection with. No infinite scrolling. Time limits might be a good idea, but I’m not sure about that.

An argument I heard this week went along the lines of the ban was a good thing as ‘we never had this in my day’. Well, we all had scurvy, clothes that had a real risk of catching fire if you ran too quickly, and the height of fashion were flares¹², so maybe ‘my day’ isn’t quite the benchmark you want it to be. Call backs to the past, and an alleged ‘golden age’ are never helpful in these circumstances, although I am really glad SM wasn’t a thing when I was a kid.

There is a feeling that SM is Bad, but that does overlook some positives. I live in a rural community, and SM kept us all sane during Covid, and is essential for my kids organising their social lives. I supposed they’ll have to work out how to use WhatsApp for more than one word responses now.

Until next time, or as the kids would say unt.

FOOTNOTES

1. Social media bans for children by country | Live tracker 2026 – Wired Parents ↩︎
2. These are usually countries famed for their excellent human rights, like China. ↩︎
3. Cartoon nicked from here: 25 Social Media Jokes and Comics | Geeky Stuffs ↩︎
4. Australia’s teen social media ban is a flop. But there’s no joy in ‘I told you so’ | Samantha Floreani | The Guardian ↩︎
5. Jesus wept. ↩︎
6. Sarcasm, folks, for the hard of thinking. ↩︎
7. Yes, Facebook, I do indeed know them and they’re not on my friends list for a reason – usually because they are cockwombles. ↩︎
8. Did someone say Temu? ↩︎
9. I follow Welsh rugby, and during the 6N I would get a hype video or say, Scott Gibbs or Gareth Cooper scoring against England, four days after we’d had a drubbing by England. Still, we’ll always have ’99, eh, Scotty? ↩︎
10. I have no clue what this means. Visible Panties Now? Very Pissed Now? ↩︎
11. He is such a bellend. Nigel Farage roasted for using old photo to celebrate England World Cup win | News Politics | Metro News ↩︎
12. Inexplicably back in fashion now. WHY? ↩︎