We’ve all heard someone say that they spent their apparently blissful childhood playing outdoors, rather than staring at their mobile phones.
Soon, however, youngsters might have no choice but to get some fresh air.
The UK is considering a social media ban for under-16s, which Australia enforced last month.
After all, almost four in 10 children aged 3-5 use social media in the UK.
But blocking TikTok is easier said than done, tech and parenting experts told Metro.
Should social media be banned for u-16s?
How would a social media ban for youngsters look like?
Australia has employed age-check methods like checking browsing history or seeing if phone activity is consistent with school times.
A platform disables an account if it identifies a user as underage. There is no penalty for a minor using social media, but firms face fines for failing to enforce the law.
Dr Yusuf Oc, a senior marketing lecturer at London’s Bayes Business School, doubts the UK government will do an outright internet ban.
The UK already has laws to limit under-16s’ access to inappropriate content.
The Online Safety Act restricts access to adult websites unless the user can prove they’re over 18, such as by uploading card details or enabling their device’s camera to take a photo, which is scanned to guess their age.
‘The key limitation is that this model mainly targets accounts, feeds, and algorithmic amplification,’ cautions Dr Oc.
What social media platforms would be banned for teens?
If Australia is any indication, a fair few:
You might notice that WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or Discord aren’t on the list. Aussie safety officials consider these sites, among others, as messaging or gaming platforms.
Why do people want a social media ban?
Australian politicians say the ban is their answer to years-old worries about social media algorithms and alluring push notifications.
A ban prevents young people from seeing harmful content, like eating disorders and violence, or becoming targets of cyber-bullying.
Supporters also point to research that has found addictive social media can worsen mental health conditions and contribute to low self-esteem.
‘When most children are not on platforms, peer pressure drops and overall harm reduces,’ Daisy Greenwell, the co-founder of the campaign group Smartphone Free Childhood, says.
‘Making social media the exception rather than the rule would be a significant societal gain.’
Antony Walker, the deputy CEO of the trade association TechUK, has been supporting UK officials ahead of the consultation.
As a father, he’s heard many parents at the school drop-off wishing they could go ‘bam’ and shut down social media.
‘Parents feel they have no control or understanding of what their child’s online world is like,’ he says. ‘But when children go to school, you have no sense of what their life outside of home is like.
‘As a parent, you have to progressively allow your children to explore the world, whether the real world or the digital world.’
Other studies show that children suffer from the same issues with or without a phone. Sometimes, it’s less about usage and more the attitudes teens have about phones.
Could youngsters bypass age checks?
They already are in Australia, with teens wrinkling their faces and Googling contraception to appear older.
Others just browse social media without an account or click on shared links to outsmart politicians.
Julie Dawson, the chief policy and regulatory officer at age-verification platform Yoti, says: ‘In the offline world, how can you stop an 18-year-old going and buying alcohol which he then gives to his younger brother?
‘The same is true online. If an older brother completed an age check online and then handed the phone to his younger sibling, this would be very hard to stop.’
Tech companies could deploy sporadic age checks or use anti-spoofing software to stop AI-generated photos or IDs.
Sometimes, it’s not even as intricate as that.
Kat Cloud, head of government relations at Sumsub, says: ‘We’ve seen countless examples of people getting past checks, from sophisticated 3D models to simple screenshots from low-resolution games.’
Both stress that age checks, while not perfect, are still an important safeguarding tool for tech giants.
What do tech experts think?
Conflicted. Many say that banning youngsters from social media is an idea that comes from a good place. The execution, however, isn’t so good.
Evidence that these bans work still isn’t there, given how novel they are.
A ban also disproportionately affects teens living in remote areas or minority groups who may have found communities through social media.
With fewer options, they might push teens to less regulated parts of the internet.
Another risk is that a ban for some becomes one for all, Rob Jardin, the chief digital officer at NymVPN, says.
‘A free society should be able to protect children without normalising surveillance, he adds.
‘Once everyone has to prove who they are to speak or read online, that infrastructure doesn’t disappear, it expands.’
What worries Walker is politicians seeing a ban as an easy fix.
Fewer pupils attend after-school clubs, the high street is ‘dying’ and more than two-thirds of council-funded youth centres have closed over the past 14 years amid budget cuts.
‘Are we going to start investing in youth centres and sports fields?’ Walker asks.
‘There are lots of other things that inadvertently drive children indoors, and this raises questions about how we want to bring up young children.’
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