The BBC has a live page following the ban and surprise surprise – it didn’t take long for people to circumvent the ban at all, with alternative social media being used (eg Lemon8, Yope, etc), VPNs being used (and the use of VPNs being threatened by ministers), pleas by campaigners asking for parents not to help circumvent the rules, etc.
That the ban won’t work is predictable. It will force kids into hiding, where they will be beyond the oversight of absolutely anyone. Worse, it will leave them with no help when things do go wrong – who is going to be complaining to their parents or the police about cyberbullying when they are using an illegal platform where they are being bullied on?
The age limit of 16 is entirely arbitrary too. Some kids develop faster than others and some very much slower. With science showing that adulthood starts at 32 (and looking at how far right politics and belief in populist nonsense is going globally, in many cases seemingly never), mature children are being punished and immature young adults are being exposed to content that they are not equipped to handle.
The goal – stopping toxic, unwanted behaviors in social media platforms – is a good one. By now we should be able to define these unwanted behaviours (eg no false news; no body shaming; no targeted abuse; no political preferences in feeds; who really needs video calls with groups of more than 6 people on a social media platform anyway? etc) and test them. To throw a random age line at the problem doesn’t solve it. How about for every instance of one of these behaviours a huge fine is levied (eg $1 million or above – the scale of the profits of the social media companies beggars belief, so only huge fines will make them feel the cost / benefit of paying the fine / fixing the problem lies in the fixing the problem side of things) – something that these behemoths cannot ignore. And if too many transgressions are detected in a certain period (eg 100 fines per week) then the platform is closed entirely for a certain period (weeks / months). This will incentivise the social media platforms to fix the problems which is what we want instead of driving kids into hiding and exposing them to a much more dangerous social media landscape.
Robin Edgar
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