Banning social media for children is a bad idea

it is clear Which Social media It affects mental health and poses a danger to children and adolescents. One study showed that it only took 40 minutes of browsing to a platform in Mexico for recommending content to a teenage girl that contained references to suicide.

What’s even more worrying is that these are not isolated glitches but a result of how algorithms are designed to attract users and keep them on platforms longer. With the infinite scrolling and instant gratification it provides, social Media can become Addiction is like cigarettes.

These factors, along with concerns about screen time and other concerns, have led many countries to impose bans or restrictions on social media. children. last year, It became Australia The first country to try this Keep people under 16 off apps. In June in the United Arab Emirates Take action Preventing young people under the age of 15 from entering platforms such as Tik Tok, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebookand X.

Just last week, the UK She revealed a plan Impose a midnight social media curfew next spring for 16- and 17-year-olds, a ban they can opt out of. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in June that he hoped to pass a tougher social media ban for under-16s.Before ChristmasStarmer formally resigned earlier this week, but the legislation is likely to continue. On Tuesday, lawmakers in France I passed a bill Block social media for anyone under 15. President Emmanuel Macron is expected to sign it into law.

However, something happens that at first glance seems contradictory. Many organizations that have spent years researching these dangers and advocating for children’s rights do not support such a ban. On the contrary, they warn, separating children from these settings may treat symptoms but leaves the root causes of the problem intact, and can even create new risks.

The action taken by Australia was internationally welcomed and considered a model. But six months after its implementation. Seven out of 10 are parents They reported that their children still had accounts on Instagram, TikTok, or Snapchat. This is not surprising. Not only because adolescence is usually a time of rebellion but also because it is natural to resist being excluded from the places where a large part of their social life takes place and where the people they grew up with hang out.

Social media platforms are more than just entertainment for young people, especially for those who grew up during the COVID-19 pandemic. Comparing them to cigarettes ignores the fact that they also perform important functions. They are spaces for socializing, learning and accessing information that is often not available elsewhere, especially in places where educational gaps and disparities in access to public services persist. In general, how many times have Reddit saved us with an answer that we could not find in the textbook, at school or in a public institution? And how many times has a YouTube tutorial or topic on X taught us something that no one else explained to us?

Furthermore, social media can provide a sense of community and a space for self-expression for those who don’t always find it offline. For teens who belong to historically marginalized groups — such as LGBTQ+, people of color, or people with disabilities — these spaces can also provide an opportunity to explore and build their identities with more freedom, find role models, and feel less alone.

And precisely because social media is more than just entertainment, it’s worth asking whether some solutions might simply replace other harms. For example, age verification involves collecting highly sensitive data, which makes platforms more attractive to cybercriminals and puts the privacy and safety of minors at risk. This is not hypothetical. When Discord implemented an age verification system in 2025, it ran into a problem A data breach involving more than 70,000 identity documents.