Banning Social Media?

Some Friday morning thoughts on banning social media for under-16s.

I absolutely think we have a problem, and it is not just about under-16s. But I wonder if the mainstream media debate is in the wrong place. The government’s consultation is looking more broadly, which feels like the right thing to do, even though it is still focused on children. It explicitly includes options such as “removing or limiting functionalities which drive addictive or compulsive use of social media, such as ‘infinite scrolling’”.

The Australian model effectively bans named applications for under-16s. There is a list, based on a general description in the legislation. But should we instead be looking at regulating toxic design patterns? The most obvious example is infinite scroll, but others include auto-play video, algorithmic feeds tuned solely to maximise engagement, and similar techniques.

If you look at parallels with food regulation, we have tended to focus on ingredients rather than brands. In the UK, we regulate high-caffeine drinks, not Red Bull or Monster. We regulate alcohol, not Stella or WKD. As far as I know we don’t regulate “drinks whose aim is to loosen inhibition and drive social interaction”.

Is this more complex? Possibly. But not necessarily in the long run, and it arguably gives us a much better chance of addressing broader societal harms than simply playing whack-a-mole by naming specific platforms.

Could this go wrong? Absolutely. There are historical examples. In the UK in the 1990s, attempts to ban illegal raves relied partly on defining the “ingredients” of the music, leading to the infamous reference to “repetitive beats”.

Still, this absolutely feels like an approach worth exploring. It is not a new idea. There have been various attempts to address this around the world over the last few years, including in the US at both federal and state level. We can learn from these, and perhaps take a fresh look at the idea and applying it more widely.