More countries consider banning social media for young people, experts warn of ‘lazyness’

Governments around the world are working to crack down on teen social media use amid mounting evidence of potential harm, but critics argue that blanket bans are an ineffective quick-fix solution.

In December, Australia became the first country to implement a blanket social media ban for under-16s. Platforms such as Meta Inc.’s Instagram, ByteDance Inc.’s TikTok, Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube, Elon Musk’s X, and Reddit will face penalties if they do not take age verification measures.

Several European countries are currently considering following Australia’s lead, with the UK, Spain, France and Austria developing their own proposals. Although a nationwide ban in the United States is unlikely, legislation is underway at the state level.

This comes after Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, faced two separate court losses in March regarding child safety and social media harm.

A Santa Fe jury found that Mehta misled users about child safety on the app. The next day, a Los Angeles jury ruled that Meta and YouTube had designed platform features that contributed to the plaintiff’s mental health harm.

Sonia Livingstone, a professor of social psychology and director of the Center for Digital Futures for Children at the London School of Economics, told CNBC that these developments “will lead to even more legislation.”

But Livingstone said the social media ban for teens is a haphazard solution by a government that has failed for years to properly police big tech.

“I think the argument for a ban is an admission of failure that you can’t regulate businesses, so you can only restrict children,” she said, explaining that the United States and Europe already have many laws in place but aren’t being enforced.

“When is the government really going to enforce, raise the stakes on fines and, where necessary, ban businesses that don’t comply?” she added.

Experts argue that for too long the industry has escaped accountability and the strict requirements faced by other industries.

“[The government]should enforce the law,[and]big tech companies should face a lot of regulatory intervention that prohibits the kinds of things they’re doing now,” Livingston said.

She highlighted the UK’s online safety laws, which “require safety by design,” according to Livingstone. This means features like Snapchat’s “Quick Add,” which encourages teens to make friends with other people, should be shut down, the report said.

Livingston believes that if social media companies had undergone proper pre-market testing to establish whether their features were safe for their target users, an outright ban would not have even been a topic.

“There are a lot of areas where the market is working well, but before[products]go to market, they need to be tested to make sure they meet standards,” she said. “If we did that to AI and social media, we’d be in a completely different place and we wouldn’t have to talk to kids about banning anything.”

Josh Golin, executive director of the Boston-based nonprofit Fair Play for Kids, told CNBC he wants “privacy and safety by design, not an outright ban” across the country.

This includes passing the Children and Youth Online Privacy Protection Act to end personal data-based advertising to children, so “social media companies have less economic incentive to target and addict children.”

Golin added that passing the Senate version of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) is also key to ensuring that platforms are held legally accountable for design features that can lead to addiction and other harms.

He added that Meta has already successfully lobbied to block KOSA, even though it won’t pass the Senate in 2024. But if the bill continues to block more bills, Golin believes there could be more pressure to “line up behind the ban because it’s addictive and dangerous.”

Livingstone said a blanket ban on social media would only punish a generation of young people who have become increasingly reliant on online means of socializing. He said the ban was a “lazy” solution by the government and an “unfair” outcome for young people.

“This is 15 years where we didn’t let our kids go outside and see their friends. This is 15 years where we stopped funding parks and youth clubs for kids to gather,” she said.

“So the current ban says, ‘Kids, we can’t make this regulation work. We can’t update it fast enough. We don’t have anything else for you to do, but it’s hard. We scared your parents into feeling like there’s nothing we can do, and we’re going to take you away from services that you expected to feel socialized and entertained.'”

Dr Victoria Nash, associate professor and senior policy researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, said social media bans were “extreme” measures that would alienate young people from the benefits these platforms offer.

“We know that children and young people are getting their news online and through apps, so we cut them off,” she says. “My view is that I don’t think this justifies a ban. To me, what this justifies is more responsible behavior by social platforms in reducing the most harmful features.”

He said the ban could push young people and children into less regulated areas of the internet where they may not have similar protections.

Many Australian teens ignored the social media ban when it first came into force in December. According to a BBC report, downloads of VPNs that hide users’ location to circumvent country-specific restrictions were on the rise before the ban.

In addition, downloads of some apps that were not yet affected, such as Lemon8, Yope, and Discord, also spiked in the days after the law took effect, according to the report.

“I think it (the ban) does remove all the harmful aspects, but it also removes the positive aspects. Whether that’s appropriate remains to be seen,” Nash added.