A consensus is growing in Britain that social media has had a negative impact on young people, and that the Government should do more to help them. Research carried out earlier this year by More in Common shows majority support for raising the legal age for social media access from 13 to 16 in all age groups, including among Generation-Z respondents, who themselves grew up with smartphones.

Small wonder, then, that Digital Secretary Peter Kyle this week raised the possibility of a “social media watershed”, possibly modelled on TikTok’s introduction of 10pm curfews for under-16s and enhanced parental tools. For once, the Government could introduce a popular measure to address a problem that worries a majority of voters — including parents and teenagers themselves — without spending money.

Unfortunately, the evidence that social media is the cause of so many problems is inconclusive. As Professor Pete Etchells details in his 2024 book Unlocked, the effects of these platforms are not universally harmful, and vary enormously between individuals and contexts. A significant minority of the digital generations (one in five Millennials and almost a quarter of Gen Z) think social media’s impact on under-16s is positive.

In an age where so much social contact has moved online, teenagers naturally conduct much of their crucial peer interaction and identity-building through their smartphones. This has many drawbacks; but without change which moves that interaction back from cyberspace into real life, social media use is often countering rather than feeding loneliness and isolation.

Restricting social media access for under-16s would also be a difficult policy to implement. Even now, when the legal limit is supposedly 13, it is widely agreed that it’s very easy for under-13s to access social media. The 20-somethings of today got around parental rules by changing settings, using other devices and secret accounts, and generally being more tech-savvy than the adults. If today’s under-13s are successfully circumventing the law, it’s hard to think tomorrow’s 15-year-olds will have much trouble. After all, they’re essentially the same cohort, with years of practice getting around the law and adult rules.

The Online Safety Act’s requirements for age verification systems come into effect this summer, and social media companies will be among those enforcing legally-mandated checks on would-be users. Some platforms, including Instagram and Discord, have been experimenting with AI tools which predict a user’s age from their face, as an alternative to uploading photo ID. It’s essentially an AI version of the pub landlord or tobacconist looking you over before deciding whether to serve you without seeing a driving licence.

The elephant in the room, of course, is universal digital ID, so any one of us can verify that we’re old enough to access age-limited content online. The potential price of protecting children from adult content online is that users consent to identify themselves — not just as adults, but as themselves in particular. There are obvious downsides to this, such as data leaks. People who use their digital ID to access sexually explicit material, for instance, could find their private proclivities made public, or used for blackmail.

Biometric digital ID, either run or licensed by governments, also makes citizens potentially transparent to the state in all their online interactions. Whatever one thinks of a current government’s benign intentions, it’s easy to imagine a change in administration bringing in less comfortable surveillance regimes.

Would UK citizens be prepared to “carry” Government digital ID as the price of raising the age of social media access to 16?  A majority say yes. As ever, offering to protect the electorate and their children is the easiest way to gain consent for more state power. A “social media watershed” would be just one step in this process.

---

Timandra Harkness presents the BBC Radio 4 series, FutureProofing and How To Disagree. Her book, Technology is Not the Problem, is published by Harper Collins.

TimandraHarknes

---