A social media ban would punish teenagers for tech platform’s failures

Calls to ban children and young people from social media until they are 16 are growing louder, and I understand why. Parents are exhausted, and too many young people are being failed by the online world.

But, while driven by good intentions, a blanket ban on teenagers accessing social media platforms just doesn’t stack up as the answer to keeping children safe online.

For countless young people, social media can be a lifeline. A place where isolated teenagers find community, where LGBTQ+ young people find acceptance and where neurodiverse children find ways to learn and connect.

Through Childline, children tell us how they use social media to connect and share content with family members, to meet likeminded peers and to engage in communities and trends that they love when they are feeling low.

Pulling the plug on those spaces overnight would take away these communities and limit teenager’s worlds.

Everyone involved in this debate has the best interests of children at heart, but we know that barring children from mainstream social media platforms won’t stop them going online. It will simply push them to unregulated forums, anonymous apps, and gaming platforms where risks are higher and support is scarce.

When you drive young people underground, you don’t reduce harm. You bury it where it’s hardest to see and easiest to exploit.

And once that happens, something even more dangerous follows. Suddenly you have children and young people who are less likely to speak up or reach out for help.

If social media becomes something they must conceal, they are less likely to tell parents or teachers when something goes wrong and report inappropriate things they’ve seen and grooming or abuse they may experience.

They’ll stay silent because they fear getting in trouble. That is a gift to abusers, not a safeguard for children.

To protect our children and young people we need to tackle the underlying problem head on: that until now tech companies have built platforms that are unsafe by design.

Algorithms push extreme and distressing content because it keeps users hooked. Features like infinite scroll and autoplay are engineered to keep teenagers online longer than they intend. These systems are not accidents; they are business models.

That is why the Online Safety Act matters. We are already seeing companies make long‑overdue changes as Ofcom’s Children’s Safety Codes begin to bite. But we need Government to go further.

It’s encouraging to see the Government not leaning towards a one size fits all ban on social media, but instead launching a serious, evidence‑led consultation to improve children’s relationship with technology.

This is a valuable opportunity to ensure children’s safety is a built-in requirement of online platforms and consider important issues such as age-appropriate experiences, addictive design and a lack of enforcement of existing age limits.

But that process will only be credible if it leans heavily on the voices of children and young people themselves. They live in the reality of social media every day and their voices matter.

For me, the heart of this debate is clear: children and young people have a fundamental right to participate safely in the digital world, as they do in physical spaces. They have a right to information, to connection, and to community.

We should not strip those rights away because tech companies have failed to act responsibly.

Instead, we need to hold those companies to account, demand safety by design and insist that children’s wellbeing matters more than engagement metrics.

We all, parents, children’s organisations, government and regulators, want a safer, healthier digital future for children. Achieving that future means working together and focusing our energy on holding Big Tech to account. It’s a huge task, and at times it feels daunting, but it is possible.

We’ve just seen proof of that. The recent response to Grok showed what happens when people power and Government stand side by side. One of the richest and most powerful tech companies on the planet was forced to change course because the public demanded better.

That is the kind of collective action children need from us now. We can and must do it again to keep them safe online.