Major update on social media ban for U16s – ‘children need their childhood back’
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/plans-ban-social-media-under-36719524
Posted by vriska1
Major update on social media ban for U16s – ‘children need their childhood back’
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/plans-ban-social-media-under-36719524
Posted by vriska1
38 Comments
>Speaking to The Sunday Mirror, she said: “I’m going to announce on Monday that we will take a power in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill that will allow us to implement the result of our consultation. We will take a power in the bill so that we can, once we’ve got the results of this consultation, act immediately on whichever option we go for, whether that is a ban on all social media for the under 16s or a whole range of other things like curfews overnight, emergency brakes to stop you from doom scrolling, action on VPNs to stop you getting around things.”
With all these different countries implementing or trying to implement similar authoritarian internet controls doesn’t it make you ask who is directing them to do this? There is all this talk about foreign funding of political parties, billionaires interfering with in politics etc but here is very clear collusion on a global scale with very scary authoritarianism being implemented and no one seems to care at all.
If this really goes ahead, reddit will likely get ID locked, which i won’t be doing
Classic black and white thinking from the current labour government. Yes there are issues with children using social media, but there are also benefits. Why not look at solutions the mitigate the downsides rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Gutting youth clubs, and third places and perennially threatening to remove benefits for poorest, and saying children need their childhood back.
We live in a clown world
If you don’t give an alternate thing for children to do instead all you’re doing is making it so they are further isolated
So what will there be for them when the internets gone/
Parental controls exist. Why we are not educating and providing support to parents to help set these controls would likely be cheaper and fulfill the objective of this. Why create a new law that just gives the next bad government more power to abuse down the line?
And people on here wonder why this parliament is a complete joke.
Complete basket case messaging.
“We want you to vote and pay taxes but you’re still a child and we don’t want you to have adult responsibilities and we need to stop you going on the Internet and protect you from every little thing….oh but you can still join the army and you can consent”.
Old enough to pay tax, old enough to vote, old enough to serve in the military and old enough to consent means adult.
So everything that comes with that should be open to them.
They’re minors or they’re not, you cannot have it both ways.
Edit: for those about to misunderstand. U16 also covers those that are 16, which is why it’s such a basketcase policy idea.
For the rest, there are parental controls, they exist and parents need to start using them instead of this lazy “let the government do it for me” parenting we are seeing today.
My nephews don’t go on social media because their parents aren’t fucking lazy and have properly parental controlled accounts and monitoring for their devices.
This law is not about ‘saving children’, it’s about forcing everyone (including you and me) to show their ID and prove their age to access the internet.
Meanwhile kids will just use VPNs and other means to bypass age verification, just like they’re doing in Australia.
The end result will be 1) no kids protected 2) everyone’s ID and faces stored on dodgy US-based age verification systems with zero GDPR protection.
This is a stupid law.
Just a reminder that the NSPCC and 30+ other child welfare organisations are AGAINST this law as it will actually put kids in more danger than they are now.
The House of Lords and the government are ignoring the warnings of child welfare experts.
Well getting rid of social media isn’t going to magically bring it back on day 1.
Why do we NEVER look at the root causes or the structural issues at play? We do we act like a ban in this country is an effective one size fits all solution?
When I send my 8yr old out to play with his friends, they will often bring their phone or iPad outside.. to which I find them all huddled over the electronic devices instead of playing. Total different world to what I grew up in
In other news, all things kids might want to do outside has been removed or had a cost, and any gatherings of “youths” will be seen as bad.
My teenage years were spent drinking and smoking at the skatepark, chatting to girls on MySpace and being exposed to all kinds of nefarious shit on IRC by my WoW Guild.
I agree, our children should be getting baked and learning how to flame Hunters in Molton Core before heading out to the woods to try and pull while avoiding accidentally rolling into stinging nettles while fucking in a field, then maybe make it back into town to steal some Pokémon cards from Woolworths before they shut as they have zero security and staff who are nore monged out than anyone. Finally back to the skatepark to trade Pokémon cards for a few splifs and back home in time for the aforementioned flaming of huntards, only to be met with meatspin and blue waffle links in the guild chat.
Social media isn’t the problem but it’s the addiction to social media and the addiction to sharing without a filter. What we really need is a Jimmy Cricket type app that can monitor, suggest and guide a child on the ramifications of what they share and how to navigate social interactions on social media. Kids need guidance and monitoring, blocking does not work and never has done.
Yes but we need activities to fill the voids – probably shouldn’t have closed all the youth clubs. Hindsight etc but really what a bad call….
Want to know what the actual damage is?
Celebrities and influencers.
These are tied to social media sure but if the ASA and other powers took control early and went “Kim Kardashian doesn’t actually look like this” then a whole lot of other issues wouldn’t have happened.
Social media either needs banning totally or serious regulation. Measles outbreaks are a direct correlation of social media use. Adults been radicalised by conspiracy theories. The tech bros dont care about their platforms and the harm its causing. And fines won’t do anything
Nanny state at it again.
How about just enabling and helping parents with tools and options?
Android phones could have parental controls – wait, they already have, it’s just mostly not used. Maybe they could come enabled by default if you specify it’s for a minor at sale. Or at first setup. I mean controlled by the parent, not the nanny state.
And they want 16 year olds to vote? lol
The young teens (who will feel the effects on the ban) will associate Labour with being overbearing on their personal choices, and that sentiment will continue for years. That’s also ignoring the fact they will likely just get around it (potentially putting them in more harm).
A masterful gambit from Labour…
If you opened the dictionary to the word unenforceable there would be a picture of this legislation.
One thing I have noticed over the years with my Apprentices (have for 6 months then they go elsewhere in the business) is that, unless they’ve come from a stable background with good parenting, they tend to be lacking in drive, determination and certainty in their words. Some of them have been so timid that I’ve had to almost treat them as a blank slate, and build them from the ground up into someone who isn’t afraid to walk up to people, or to walk into a room full of people and convince them on a projects particulars.
Constantly being on Thick-Tok with those 15 second long dopamine hits, or ‘The Gram’ with people seemingly achieving the impossible with next to no effort, really hasn’t helped them.
If there are legitimate reasons for not allowing under 16s on social media then I will absolutely listen. To both legislators and the under 16s mind you.
I do, however, reject the statement of children requiring their childhood back. If adult life can exist with social media access then so can children’s lives. Banning it so they can get their childhood back smacks of this old person rhetoric that modern is bad and “ooh we were ‘appier back then”. It just reminds me of back in the 90s when all the old busybodies complained that children were inside on computer games and these new fangled console computer whizzgummits too much. Nobody banned PlayStation.
There must be scope to incorporate these things into the lives of children rather than outright banning it. If anything is wrong with today as opposed to yesterday, it’s parents’ complete hands-off approach to parenting, requiring the state to protect their children, as if simply keeping the child alive is the responsibility of the parent.
UK thinking this will somehow save the nation is wild.
Majority the pro ban idiots in here are older Millennials and Gen X. These people are naturally biased against social media, as they themselves didn’t grow up with it.
Banning it is low IQ. The cat is already out f the bag. All this would result in a wide scale nerf to the social wellbeing and damage financial mobility, that comes with having access to social media in this day and age.
There is no law a government can pass that will make up for bad parenting.
If a kid has an iPad put in their hands from 1 year old, staring at AI slop for 4hrs or more per day to keep them quiet then they are screwed no matter what social media law gets past.
If parents cba to setup parental controls on kids devices then no law will be effective at restricting the content those kids can access.
Here’s the answer. Parents put parental controls and data limits on their kids mobile network so they can’t spend their life scrolling social media, and on home and school networks you ban whatever website you want for whichever devices you choose.
It’s time parents became digitally literate.
Good, it’ll definitely make it easier for me as a parent (who would strongly limit is use anyway when they grew up), to be like “oh well it’s illegal, soz. Here’s a dumb phone.”
It’s not just social media (though it’s a good place to start) – generalised digital addiction is a real thing – say you ban snap and insta, what about Pinterest? YouTube? It’s the shorts/infinite feeds that are addictive and they are everywhere.
To ban under 16s everyone else will have to confirm their age to use social media. This will be quickly expanded to the entire internet and digital ID will be a thing. “Think of the children” is the excuse they need that nobody will argue with. Wake up.
“action on VPNs to stop you getting around things”. Oh yes that unenforceable action. It’s going to be extremely interesting to see how this one plays out.
There was some research published recently [here](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5cee5bd0687a1500015b5a9f/t/6967cf18548f8f796a6a070a/1768410904854/YS+SYP+Young+People+and+Politics+Report+FINAL.pdf) which shows that three-quarters of Young People use social media every day or a few times a week to find out about what’s going on in the world. So banning Social Media for young people will limit their access to information surrounding Political Affairs.
While a social media ban is maybe good in theory, the world has changed even from when I was younger, and it is a major part of life now.
Social media first came out at the end of high school for me and was obviously very different. But now it is a way of staying in touch, seeing what others are up to and if you’re not on it you do miss a lot of what’s happening not just in your friends but globally too. Not to mention it actually becoming people’s jobs now, even from younger ages.
Blocking it just means they will find another new thing, or more likely they’ll just find a way around it. Just look at online piracy, adult sites etc… In the UK those are either now all blocked or need age verification. But using a VPN you’re around that literally in a second.
I get there’s bullying and stuff that goes on too, but that’s going to happen with or without it. And if a bunch of your friends are still on it (which they likely will be) and your kid isn’t, then they’ll be isolated even more.
I get that it’s not a great thing and people are on it too much. Myself included. But it should be down to parents to monitor that and restrict usage. If you want your kids to have more of a ‘childhood’ and kid experiences over being on a screen all day, that should be on you. I have a niece and nephew and their screen time is pretty restricted so they aren’t just on those all day every day.
I think a ‘ban’ would just be a small hurdle as people always find ways around things. Much like all the governments bans or blocks so far. I’d imagine all you’d have to do if a VPN didn’t work was just make all new emails and accounts changing your age (basically what many people did years ago when you had to be 13 to sign up for Facebook).
I’m all for this but why is it just for children? Yes it impacts them but what about adults? Isn’t it funny how we make these rules for others but we are reluctant to apply it to ourselves.
Roughly translated, we need to get the kids wandering the streets again, drinking cider, smoking, taking drugs and having sex in the park.
Aye, those days were grand..
Here’s a radical idea, why don’t governments do more to make sure predators can’t get access to online spaces and actually experience consequences for their crimes instead of putting the onus on kids to avoid a media they NEED to learn to navigate safely?
This is like forbidding your kids to eat junk food, then unleashing them at uni and they end up bingeing only crap, or not teaching them about safe sex and being all shocked pikachu face when they or their partner end up pregnant.
Censorship is not safety. Ignorance is not safety. Both are, in actuality, far more damaging in the long term.
Weird how they’d do this, but at the same time tell children who can barely even think for themselves that they can change genders.
I dont agree with the law but speaking to teachers the other day they were all supportive of the idea that we’ve created a Tiktok generation that need learning in 3 minutes slots with immediate rewards coming back to them. There are real addiction / dependency issues but the ban isnt the solution
I’m generally not on board with banning things like this, but the main social media platforms (especially Meta and X) are completely rogue and have left the government with little choice.
I agree with the sentiment that it would be better if kids were outside like before, but the reality is that the world has changed. There is a severe lack of 3rd spaces and the ones that do exist are usually a car ride away. Kids can’t play in the street outside their house now either due to the dramatic increase in road traffic. If we want to see kids outside it needs a behaviour change from everyone. Stop buying stupid big cars and use your car less.