Banning Social Media For Kids Is A Bad Idea

Of course that visitors it affects mental health and puts children and young people at risk. Some studies have shown that they just took it 40 minutes of browsing for a platform in Mexico to create what a teenage girl has to say about suicide.

The biggest concern is that this does not happen automatically but because of the way the algorithms are designed to connect users and keep them on the platforms for a long time. With the endless scrolling and fun it provides, chatting media can be as hard as a cigarette.

This, combined with concerns about exposure time and other concerns, has led many countries to impose bans or restrictions on social media. children. Last year, Australia became the world’s first attempt prevent people under the age of 16 from using the software. In June, the United Arab Emirates he set the standard to lock youths under 15 years old out of platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebookand X.

Last week, UK revealed the plan to introduce a midnight social media ban in the spring of 16 and 17-year-olds – which they can opt out of. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in June that he hoped to end a strict ban on social media for under-16s.Before Christmas.” Starmer resigned earlier this week, but the rules are set to continue. On Tuesday, French lawmakers he presented the bill banning social media for anyone under the age of 15. President Emmanuel Macron is expected to sign it into law.

However, something is happening that, at first glance, seems contradictory. Many organizations that have spent years researching these dangers and protecting children’s rights do not support such bans. Instead, they warn that removing children from these environments may eliminate the symptoms but leave the source of the problem, and may lead to new problems.

Australia’s measure was praised internationally and was seen as a model. Six months after its establishment, however, seven out of ten parents they also said that their children still have accounts on Instagram, TikTok, or Snapchat. This is not surprising. Not only because adolescence is a time of rebellion but also because it is natural to resist being removed from the environment where a large part of one’s social life takes place and where the people one grew up with hang out.

Social media is more than entertainment for young people, especially for those who grew up during the Covid-19 pandemic. Comparing them to cigarettes ignores the fact that they also serve important purposes. It is a place to socialize, learn, and gain information that is often not available anywhere else, especially in areas where educational gaps and disparities in access to public services persist. In general, how many times has Reddit saved us with an answer that we couldn’t find in a book, school, or public school? And how many times has a YouTube tutorial or thread on X taught us something no one else explained to us?

In addition, social media can provide community information and a place for self-expression to those who do not find it outside of the Internet. For young people in groups that were historically excluded – such as LGBTQ + people, people of color, or the disabled – this center can also provide an opportunity to explore and create more freedom, find role models, and feel less alone.

Precisely because social media is so much more than just entertainment, it is important to ask whether other methods can simply eliminate one problem or another. Age verification, for example, involves the collection of highly identifiable data, making the platform more attractive to criminals and putting children’s privacy and safety at risk. This is not a fantasy. When Discord implemented age verification in 2025, it ran into a big problem The data breach involved more than 70,000 personal data.