Where anyone who’s motivated to push misinformation, products or political ideologies onto an impressionable audience can pay to do so. It can also be very easy to expose personal identifiable information, or develop harmful and self-sabotaging attitudes.
Kids under 16 currently on social media will be understandably sore about being kicked off. In many cases, they might use a VPN to get around it, or simply try lying or ask for their parents’ help. They might co-ordinate with friends to hop to smaller similar apps and hope they don’t also end up complying. But none of that hurts the potential efficacy of the ban in the long term.
The immediate impact might be that only a fraction of all 13-, 14- and 15-year-olds stop using the apps, but that fraction will grow over time as the apps will become far less appealing when fewer of the kids’ friends are using them.
Each year, the new 13-year-olds will have grown up with significantly less exposure to the idea of using social media. Of the children who are 10 today, will any of them ever want to be on TikTok or Instagram badly enough to sneak in before their 16th birthday? In three years, if they and all their friends are just not interested, the ban will have been a success.
Ideally, as we adjust to the new landscape and similar restrictions come into place around the world, alternatives will appear that have less of a focus on constant engagement, algorithmically served content, maximising likes and monetisation.
It would be great for kids to have ubiquitous and safe online spaces for themselves and their friends and their communities, where they can share their thoughts and creations. And then, when they turn 16, they can decide if and how they want to connect to the entire world.
That’s admittedly a tough system to build if you’re not making billions from selling people’s information for advertising, though.
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Currently, the best options are messaging and gaming platforms, some of which seem ideal to grow into these kind of spaces. Others in that group need different kinds of regulation and scrutiny before I’d consider them safe.
Ultimately, making the kind of platforms specified in the new laws less desirable for kids over time (and for adults, too) could end up being a good thing, even if it’s not a silver bullet for online harms. It might help us find ways to connect, create and consume online without being treated like cattle or pawns.
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