Rebekah Morton makes a plea for sensible social media policies and government investment in media literacy
In December, Australia became the first country to ban social media for under-16s. The UK is looking to follow suit, and across the country, schools are implementing “no smartphone” policies. According to Ofcom, nine out of ten students own a phone by the time they reach secondary school, and almost a quarter of children between five and seven have their own smartphone.
In the US, two lawsuits accusing social media companies of harming children have begun. One case alleges that Meta failed to protect children from sexually explicit material, while another accuses Meta, Google (YouTube), ByteDance (TikTok) and Snap Inc (Snapchat) of deliberately making their platforms addictive for children. The latter states that, “Borrowing heavily from the behavioural and neurobiological techniques used by slot machines and exploited by the cigarette industry, defendants deliberately embedded in their products an array of design features aimed at maximising youth engagement to drive advertising revenue”.
In “Lost Generation”, a youth-led documentary about social media, young people and professionals talk about the addictive nature of short-form content found on social media apps. It leads with this statement: “In the UK, children aged 5-15 spend an average of 5 hours, 24 minutes per day on social media. 17.7 billion hours are lost every year”. A lack of critical thinking when interacting with online content was picked up as a key issue by Emily Cherkin, an education specialist, stating that critical thinking skills are not being developed as they should be and children are therefore susceptible to content that guides their opinions in more and more extreme directions.
The government, schools and parents are all taking action. The House of Lords is soon to vote on an amendment for an outright ban on children using social media, and Liz Kendall MP (Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology) has said that the government will have a “firm position « on the issue by the summer.
In schools, the use of phone pouches, where students hand in their phones at the beginning of the day, is already prevalent and a state school in London is going a step further and introducing a “brick only” policy for years 7-11, in which students would only be allowed to have brick phones, capable of messages and calls but with no access to the internet. At least 3000 parents in Berkshire are backing a campaign to ban smartphones for children until at least the end of Year 9, according to a BBC article. Some parents clearly aren’t bothering to wait for the government or schools to implement measures, but are getting on with it themselves.
However, the charities pushing for measures to protect children seem to be in the palm of the powerful. US tech companies have been accused of censoring two teenagers who had been invited to speak on online issues. The Guardian found evidence that “Childnet, a UK charity part-funded by companies including Snap, Roblox and Meta, edited out warnings from Lewis Swire and Saamya Ghai that social media addiction was an “imminent threat to our future” and obsessive scrolling was making people “sick”.
Through the implementation of age restrictions, censorship rears its ugly head again.
In an article for the Guardian, Taylor Lorenz states that, “Immediately after the child safety rules came into effect, platforms began classifying breaking news footage, war coverage, investigative journalism and political protest material as harmful content.” She suggests that a ban of this kind would lead to the infrastructure for online censorship, which will then be impossible to dismantle. She states, “These laws are not about protecting kids. They are about censorship, control and authoritarianism” Wherever it’s found, censorship is generally a sign that something is going very wrong.
Many people have been getting their information from journalists and civilians on the ground in conflict zones such as Gaza and Sudan through social media, accessing information and viewpoints that are not often shared on mainstream news channels. A ban does not deal with the problem; it just postpones it. Under sixteens should not be exposed to the world of social media unprotected, but they must be educated on it ready for when they do have access. Media literacy lessons need to become a key part of young people’s education. Learning to think critically, to analyse viewpoints and come to a conclusion for themselves. Social media isn’t going anywhere; education is the only way to protect our children and our society.
“Like a drug, the machine is useful, dangerous and habit-forming. The oftener one surrenders to it, the tighter its grip becomes.” (George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier)
Social media is both useful, dangerous and habit-forming. We mustn’t surrender to it, but we have to be able to use it. Outside the West, young people have used social media as a tool to fight for freedom and democracy, standing up against censorship and authoritarianism. We also need to use social media for social good. This will often be against the wishes of the billionaire owners and developers, against the pull of the algorithm and against the increasingly less subtle censorship by Western governments. In our online social world, being able to critically, safely and freely navigate social media is essential.