The latest plan, floated with the confidence of a minister who hasn’t spoken to an actual teenager since dial‑up, is to ban under‑16s from using social media altogether. According to the political mood music, the House of Lords is already on board, the Commons is warming up, and within a year we could see “highly effective age checks” rolled out across every platform. Because if there’s one thing the internet is famous for, it’s people telling the truth about their age.
The idea is simple: protect children from doomscrolling, online bullying, and the kind of algorithmic rabbit holes that can turn a perfectly normal 14‑year‑old into someone who thinks the moon landing was faked by lizard people. And fair enough, the online world is a mess. But banning teens from social media is like banning adults from biscuits. It sounds noble, but the only guaranteed outcome is a thriving black market in Bourbons.
We’re told this is all about wellbeing. Ministers speak solemnly about “addictive design features”, as if TikTok is a nicotine patch with dance routines. They promise “rapid implementation”, which is government‑speak for “we’ll get to it right after we’ve finished fixing the potholes, the NHS, and the economy”. Meanwhile, parents are being reassured that the state will finally step in and do what they’ve been trying to do for years: stop their children from staring at a glowing rectangle long enough to remember what their family looks like.
But here’s the problem. Teenagers are better at technology than the people trying to regulate it. These are kids who can jailbreak a phone faster than a minister can say “consultation period”. They can set up VPNs, burner accounts, and entire digital identities before breakfast. If the government thinks a ban will keep them offline, it might want to have a quiet word with Australia, where a similar policy has mostly resulted in teenagers becoming experts in circumventing Australia.
And then there’s the philosophical question: if you ban under‑16s from social media, who will teach the rest of us what the latest memes mean? Without teenagers, the cultural timeline collapses. Middle‑aged people will be wandering around saying “slay” in the wrong context. Society will crumble.
Still, the government insists it’s acting “in months, not years”. Which is impressive, because that’s roughly the same timeframe in which a teenager can create a new account, get banned, create another, and become a micro‑influencer. If nothing else, this policy will give young people a valuable lesson in bureaucracy: no matter how fast you are, the government will always be at least three steps behind.
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