UK wants to know if banning under-16s from social media does anything useful The UK government will trial different levels of restrictions on social media for under-16s with the help of 300 families, alongside a public consultation that has already gathered nearly 30,000 responses. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) will recruit families from across the UK and split them into …
Banning stuff is generally a bad thing, but we ban all kinds of things that are far less harmful than social media.
Surely rather than deciding if we should ban kids from using it we should first decide if we shouldn't just ban the whole toxic cesspit of social media for everyone.
I've yet to meet anyone make a credible argument it does more good than harm.
Or at least ban the algorithmic feeds.
Just to play devil's advocate though, a chronological list of posts is an algorithmic feed. Any sort of sorting or filtering process is - by definition - algorithmic.
Yes, I know what you mean. And I agree. But also, quite hard to legislate for unless you have a list of "approved algorithms".
They can ban targeted advertising whilst they're at it. That's actually easier to define - ads to be contextual, based on the domain/page where the impression will occur. No user data to be collected or provided to the RTB market.
Admittedly UKGov has prior form in this area with the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016, intended to address (non-alcohol or nicotine based!) "legal highs".
On the first pass, the definition of a prohibited “psychoactive substance” being: "produces a psychoactive effect in a person if, by stimulating or depressing the person's central nervous system, it affects the person's mental functioning or emotional state;'
Which of course includes food. Because people get fucking grumpy when they're hungry and suffer declined cognitive ability. They get marginally less grumpy when they're fed (or at least, are grumpy for different reasons!).
So then they carved out an exemption "7 Any substance which- (a) is ordinarily consumed as food". Which is... at best subjective. After all, correct-thinking people don't ordinarily consume marmite. But for some reason it isn't considered a legal high. As for Surströmming... less said the better.
The PSA has become somewhat of a "ways and means" act, relying largely on prosecutorial discretion and a fear of what the courts will tolerate rather than a solid definition of what is prohibited.
Also, I don't much like blaming "the algorithm". I work with algorithms all day. They are cool and useful things. The entities that bear responsibility for the unholy mess of today's social media are not "algorithms", they are people. Rich and powerful people. They could even be identified, and it we're lucky the courts will eventually do it. Blaming "the algorithm" is nothing but a distraction technique. So convenient that we can't jail "the algorithm" and we can barely fine it, isn't it?
Do you want us to instead say "blame the bad algorithm, which was written by bad people"?
It means the same thing in context. No-one is saying that "all algorithms ever are evil and should be banned"
But by your logic, you are wrong to blame "people" - people can be cool and useful things. It's only the bad people we need to blame.
a chronological list of posts is an algorithmic feed. Any sort of sorting or filtering process is - by definition - algorithmic
The problem arises when sorting or filtering is based on the content, because it then affects the way people create the content in the first place, and leads directly to all the dishonest, attention-seeking, rage-promoting, propagandising, SEO-type keyword spam bot-liked, trash that these sites are full of and which old social media technology like forums and chatrooms still aren't to this day.
"I've yet to meet anyone make a credible argument it does more good than harm."
Should this be necessary to decide whether there's a ban? Personally, the sole reason I have a Facebook account is to talk to other home machining and additive manufacturing hobbyists. I'm not one of those people who makes politics their entire personality so the algorithm never shows me rage inducing political drivel, though it does show me the odd stupid 'uplifting' story (e.g. man heard meowing, you'll never guess what happens next).
Hand an appliance without a plug to the average person today and the majority will probably either sit by their dead appliance or harm themselves trying to wire it with the plug in the socket. That doesn't mean we should ban wire strippers, just stick a warning on them and point the buyer in the direction of a good book.
Edit: equally, the majority of television shows are rubbish but I don't think that justifies a ban or diminishes the importance of the better stuff.
"I've yet to meet anyone make a credible argument it does more good than harm."
Americans have this attitude towards assault rifles. Australia banned them and that turned out pretty well.
Let's actually try banning phones and see if things get better. Then none of us are guessing. Want to track your kid? Get an Apple Air Tag or Samsung Smart Tag and sew it into their backpack.
I'm on a number of what might be classed as "boring" special interest groups on Facebook (trains, maps, pubs, my model of car, old railways, tunnels, mine and general underground exploration) where there's no bitching, no fighting, no drama - just likeminded individuals enjoying their hobby like grown ups on a modern platform now that forums seem to be dying out. And I also keep in close contact with friends and family who live a long way away.
If Facebook is a "toxic cesspit" to you, then that's probably down to the areas you frequent. Stay out of the curtain twitching local groups, don't discuss politics and religion.
“Stay out of the curtain twitching local groups, don't discuss politics and religion.”
Which is perfectly good advice. The issue is that the system is tuned to positively encourage people to go to said groups and to discuss topics which can be controversial (to some anyway). I suspect that most people (like yourself) can and do resist said temptation, but some can’t. Now I’d be the first person to say that it isn’t right to infringe on the rights of the majority just because a minority can’t resist. Yes, absolutely there should be areas in facebook etc. where said topics are discussed - but is it right that the algorithm specifically ‘pushes’ people to them, just to increase ‘engagement’ ie show more ads?
Well, maybe ban "the algorithm", the deceitful advertising and so on.
Your use of Facebook is no different to web forums, - the bits people have a problem with are not relevant to you.
So yes, "ban them all completely" is a bit extreme, but I don't think "turn them into web forums" would gain any traction!
"Stay out of the curtain twitching local groups, don't discuss politics and religion."
Very true. Recently my other half had a perfectly reasonable question to ask the local council about why something had been done, but couldn't bring themselves to message the council via Facebook because they knew others would jump on it and turn it into a rage storm of mindless off-topic government bashing.
The next day, someone else asked the same question instead and my other half's prediction came true almost immediately.
Surely rather than deciding if we should ban kids from using it we should first decide if we shouldn't just ban the whole toxic cesspit of social media for everyone.
We should certainly ban it for politicians. A trial period with all 650 members of the HoC would provide double the sample size of this study, with a double-whammy of reducing foreign influence in government!
I largely agree. The recent US trials have nailed at least one thing - the problem isn't the content. The problem is the method. Toxic content is merely the unavoidable consequence of how social media is currently designed.
Toxic content has always existed and always will exist. It's never been a big problem, because there never was very much money in promoting it, which meant it didn't get promoted, which meant not very many people got exposed to it. And because there wasn't much money in it, not very many people produced it.
Today's social media platform have come up with an unchecked feedback loop. Machine learning will figure out what triggers you, and then push that to you. It doesn't really matter what the content is - and, indeed, the algorithms don't really even know or care. That methodology is what we need to ban.
So: don't ban poorly-defined "toxic content", and don't ban based on user age.
Instead, ban pushing non-subscribed content to users, and/or ban user profiling. Either will work, and neither requires censorship or moderation (beyond the bare minimum which nobody but the most rabid free-speecher would object to). Yes, you might miss out on some nice content as a result of these changes - but guess what, believing that you need to see all of the nice content is also a distortion. Weaponized FOMO.
I frankly do not believe that there is a way to salvage Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and the like. Their entire business model is broken beyond fixing. But there absolutely are ways to build content services that don't work like that. They would never be as profitable, of course, but they could be viable if they didn't have to compete against literal drug dealers.
Also, newsflash: kids are not a different species. Yes, marketing tobacco to kids is especially effective and worthy of an explicit ban - but tobacco is very much not only harmful to kids. Same thing for self-reinforcing content feeds.
> "the problem isn't the content. The problem is the method"
Well, yeah, sure. Violent mysoginistic pr0n and hate speech are fine as long as they're not presented in an infinite scroll. OK, I'm being facetious. I like much of your argument. I'm just pointing out a weakness that you might want to tighten up for next time, e.g. they should include improved content moderation and reporting.
Similarly:
> "I frankly do not believe that there is a way to salvage Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and the like."
Not sure I agree with that bit, at least not completely. Earlier iterations of most of those platforms (that's going back well over a decade, though) weren't so bad. I don't think the changes since are necessarily irreversible. Pass stronger laws on user privacy (data collection, visibility and sharing) and actually enforce them. Legislate for tools so users can tailor their sources, feeds, presentation. Allow users to go 'dark' - no recommendations at all - you have to search or subscribe for all content you see - and they share nothing unless explicitly authorised. Allow groups of users to build a virtual community within the platform that only those members see, and that's all they see, if they so choose. That might make them useable again. That was kind of the aim of the 'virtual town square'.
It has blocked U16 from posting on social media. Largely because of abuses like bullying, pictures, and personal attacks. Not to prevent doom-scrolling, or to improve sleep: u16's aren't banned from watching social media, and the platforms still follow and promote based on browser identification.
There you go again, david 12.
Australian under-16s are forbidden from having user accounts at all. Much content is restricted without logging-in - that's the point - so only limited, and fairly innocuous, content is available. The major exception is Youtube, where the majority of content is still available when logged-out but that still restricts 'adult' content.
They are prevented from most 'doom-scrolling' because they can't have an account (Youtube again the exception). Preventing endless scroll and improving sleep are indeed some of the reasons cited by ban proponents, though I personally have little confidence in many of their arguments.
As for tracking, it's largely the social media apps, not browsers, that have been the focus of the ban. Browsers sure do break privacy if you let them but the apps are usually far worse. Still, browser or not, no log-in means less (but not no) data being collected.
I think the Australian under-16 ban, as currently formulated, is more for show than effect, so maybe we agree that far.
My wife took our baby for a health check this week. Long story short, in the cubicle next to her was a mother telling the nurse that her toddler eats really well. Quote: "She'll eat a full pot noodle to herself".
You're educating people like that, who seem to think a Pot Noodle is edible. Let alone fine fare for a baby!
Educating the children first and foremost starts with their parents. Now, how successful is a smoking parent in teaching their child not to smoke? Have an educated guess.
I see your point though and agree that a ban is not the best response to the problem. It may or may not be the best response that we have at our hands though... It's the result of a total failure of effectively regulating anti-social media for the past quarter of a century.
how successful is a smoking parent in teaching their child not to smoke? Have an educated guess.
As for a successful stategy dragging your puffing scion along to sessions of your cancer chemo- and radiation- therapy would be favourite.
Surprising what makes people give up the fags. Neither lung cancer nor cardiovascular disease deterred my father who was a packet-a-day from age 14 until 65. What made him give up the cancer sticks immediately, was when my brother told him he had spent the afternoon removing gangrenous fingers, toes etc from old buggers in the repat hospital and he had asked him why were they gangrenous - smoking. A child growing up in the aftermath of WW1 in dark houses lurking with severely disturbed and disfigured men would give anyone an absolute phobia of maiming.
While I have rarely smoked, probably not even half a packet as a teen "to fit in" & the odd cigar with my dad at Christmas, the real motivator for me not to take it up was him losing half a lung to smoking & pleurisy when I was about 9.
Of course moving to Canada, the abundance (& legalisation) of weed\bongs meant my kids simply moved to that as soon as they were "old enough", in the UK they probably would have been non-smokers, that's my one regret about moving here.
Both my parents smoked. I never did, and neither did any of my siblings. The same was true for many of my school friends. Anti-smoking education worked in many cases, and that was long before prices were hiked to astronomical levels. Now, if we could do the same for ultra-processed foods, plastic packaging, fossil-fuels, red meat and anything made from old-growth trees, that'd be great.
(To be fair, it's a shame the tobacco industry re-grouped and attacked again via vapes, but vapes aren't as bad according to the experts.)
More… or less than they want know what will happen in the next episode of the Archers ?
Becoming less certain that anything at all, let alone banning "does anything useful" in any context. Just about any action appears to compound an existing felony.
"They will also ask about practical challenges such as parents' abilities to set controls and how effective they were."
"A courageous course Minister?
"How so, Humphrey?
"Asking parents what were the major challenges and hindrances to their being effective parents risks their answers placing the problem squarely back on your desk.
I don't whether The Archers are still a thing but remember listening to it on the wireless during the '60s in the antipodean boondocks and not making head or tail of it other than nothing ever seemed to happen unlike Midsommer. ;) I do recall Morse was an avowed follower.
Just last month The Archers did a whodunit storyline that involved not a murder, but a bloke getting bopped over the head sufficiently that he couldn't remember who'd hit him, thus creating the standard unsolved-murder-in-a-tightknit-community dynamic without the usual nasty consequence for the victim. Judging by the trails that got as far as Radio 2 if I remember correctly, it was properly dramatic with most of the village being suspects at one point or other. There is a certain creative genius that you have to admire involved in writing a drama with a dogged rejection of any hint of melodrama. (Just not enough to prevent it still being boring sadly).
It's been known that Roblox is a child labour/virtual Epstein island hellscape for years. But they're a respectable and profitable company, so it's not a problem.
Out in the real world, strangers are not the biggest problem.
Funny how this government is trying everything but what is actually important.
Have you heard of anything from Covid Fraud Commissioner? So much fuss before elections and now seem to have been kicked in the long grass.
Corruption in government procurement is rampant.
We are giving away our data sovereignty and brains to foreign tax shy corporations.
Imagine HMRC is migrating to AWS with Fushietsu!
But yeah, let's ban social media, that will do.
But the current governments ability to do this so far leaves so much to be desired as to wondering why they bothered...
What they really need, is a central service for identifying denizens of the internet in a secure, centrally controlled way that's actually in the interests of the citizens and not some 3rd party service (using flawed systems prone to being faked and breached).
That there is no centralised system that can be trusted by the government says alot.
If only there was something automatically assigned to every legal citizen, some sort of Identification document able to do zero trust authentication, quick revocation (in case it's lost/stolen) but rewards citizens for actually using it (this encouraging carrying, frequent usage). If only... (And yes, other countries have managed this one, Malaysia for example with their MyKard)
Is that pronounced "fucks shit too?"
Not just the UK government that is distracted by trivialities but possibly unique in the perhaps vain hope that the population will also be equally distracted by palpable nonsense from the real challenges facing the UK, Europe and the planet.
I don't actually know the answer to the question as I don't reside on that side of the globe but if I did I would ask "has the new (Starmer) government done anything constructive? Anything at all? Or is it just another pile of bollocks?"
"I don't actually know the answer to the question as I don't reside on that side of the globe but if I did I would ask "has the new (Starmer) government done anything constructive? Anything at all? "
Can't actually think of anything! In future years he's probably going to be regarded as one of the worst UK Prime Ministers ever (and that's really quite something given how bad some other recent ones have been)!
I'm far from a Starmer fan just to be clear, but standing up to Trump and not blindly going to war with him is probably the only good example here.
On the other hand the defensive planning for that same war (lack of ships in the Med, lack of a variety of other equipment too) was a massive own goal.
There are a lot of problems. Some basic ones include the self-selection and the small sample size (300 families means likely 300 test subjects, but maybe a few more for families with multiple children in the target age range). There are bigger problems though.
One of the problems is that what they're studying is not a good reason to ban something. They're studying whether social media use has an effect on sleep. We know that answer, yes, for some people it does. But that's not a good reason to ban something since there's a lot of things that have that effect especially on adolescents. In my case, it was books. I'd read them late at night, and sometimes I'd be in a good one so I'd keep reading far too late, so I'd be tired the next day with related negative effects. That would not be a good reason to ban books even though I have a feeling I'm not the only person who did that. If it was a problem that was going to have a big effect on me, my parents could have taken away my books, but another important part of growing up is learning how to manage time, sleep, and delayed gratification because that problem specifically and many like it continue through adulthood and if I get interested in something and don't sleep, there's nobody to take it away from me now and the possible negative consequences are worse.
If a social media ban is justified, it has to be for better reasons. Those better reasons exist and may be severe enough to justify banning or restricting it depending on opinion. They won't find them if they're looking at short-term (six weeks is not a lot of weeks) outcomes in a couple basic areas where the answers are likely predetermined.
...sometimes I'd be in a good one so I'd keep reading far too late,..
I'm sure we've all been there but the difference is that it's not every night and books don't alert you 732 times a day with "27 things about Tom Bombadil that will shock you!!!!!".
Also when finished you can put the book on the shelf and that's it, it doesn't continue to scream for your attention like (anti)social media does.
I'm not sure that distinction is true. At that age, I could easily have found ways to stay up nearly every night. If it wasn't that book sitting there on the shelf telling me that I could find out what happened next if I just took it down again, it could be and at times was any of a number of other distractions. Those things were fun, the class I needed to do in the morning was boring and out of mind at the moment, so temptation was in the anti-sleep camp. I needed to learn how to predict that and accept that I was going to defer the fun thing so the thing I didn't care about went better because it was going to be important later, and that's a really important skill to learn.
The point though is that, if they're only looking for an absolute effect on sleep, it's obvious that there will be one but not obvious whether that's a problem. Let's say that we did the full analysis it would take to prove that social media's alerts mean most children find it more alluring than books, television, or other distractions. That's not what this study can or is trying to do, but another study could. Would that justify banning children from it? Or might we need a better reason than "more children are refraining from sleep to use this than are doing so for other reasons"? I don't think that reason is good enough for any global action, though parents stopping children from doing so either by using parental control software or taking the phone at some point would be logical. I'd need to see more substantial harm than that, and given the design of social media, it's likely that more substantial harm could be demonstrated.
What are they specifically trying to find out? It's not at all clear -- indeed as expressed, it's actually quite vague.
Second question: do they really think a 6 week trial (apparently without a control group) is sufficient to determine anything significant?
This looks rather like a "we take it seriously" exercise to me. It'll be darned hard to get any concrete evidence out of it due in part to the ill-defined frame of reference, but I bet that won't stop HMG drawing conclusions from it that will drive policy.
See Nassim Taleb "Fooled by randomness", Penguin Books 2007 [ISBN 978-0-141-03148-4].
There is a control group, ie just carry on as before. But I agree that six weeks does seem a bit short to compile any meaningful info. Although I suppose (and assuming that the responses afterwards are all anonymised), then, for example, if children in the complete ban via parental controls group, all report that they bypassed the controls within ten minutes and carried on as before then.....
"UK wants to know if banning under-16s from social media does anything useful"
Define useful, and to whom. If you mean will it teach them the skills necessary to circumvent the ban, and you consider them useful skills for under-16s to possess, then yes, it will be very useful indeed. Otherwise, no, it won't do anything useful whatsoever.
Do these people not remember being under 16 themselves? Would they have been inclined to cooperate with a ban on something they liked? Like hell they would. I certainly wouldn't have done, and would have made it my business to do the banned thing anyway, had I wanted to do it. The sense of getting away with it and sticking two fingers up to those imposing the ban would just have added to the fun.
Whether that would have included social media is another matter. I have very little use for it now, and very much doubt it would have appealed to me then, either - like as not, said ban would have been irrelevant. Nonetheless, others use it because they like it - to suggest that it's massively addictive is cobblers, though I'm sure the sites would love that to be true. Hardly anyone is so feeble minded as to NEED to scroll a feed because they're addicted to it, though they may be addicted to the potential damages payout that addiction might offer. Cynical? Meeee? Surely not!
"The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) will recruit families from across the UK and split them into four groups. Parents in the first group will be shown how to disable social media apps using parental controls to block their teenagers from using them at home."
The DSIT need to tell Parliament about these amazing parental controls! - the government assumed that this couldn't be done, and required many sites instead to force age restrictions.
Now, we know that neither method are all that effective against someone with a bit of knowledge or curiosity, but it's nice to see one department of government contradicting another.
The cynical may wonder if it's really down to government incompetence and ignorance, or if there was a hidden agenda!
Considering that one of the reason Australia banned the under-16 was the mentally-harmnful effect, a 6-week trial seems awfully short to see "if it works". But then again I am not a psychologist, so what would I know.
Disclosure - I am Australian, and I support having an age limit on dark mes that is social media for the same reason I support age limits on alcohol consumption and driving. YMMV.
How many 9, 10, 11, etc year olds are using FB or Twitter (which was banned)? How many are on Roblox and Minecraft (which have social components but aren't banned)?
How many were using Insta, TikTok or SnapChat (that were banned)? And how many were already on the hundreds of alternatives (that aren't banned) and will stay there once they're 16 - so the government is just arbitrarily creating business models.
How many kids are using various messengers that are just a shade away from being social media but aren't banned?
How many parents are sitting back and thinking the problem is solved when the law hasn't actually done anything?
