Sir Keir Starmer’s proposed ban on under-16s using social media will go ahead under his successor as prime minister, Andy Burnham.
On the face of it, many Herald readers might see fit to support these plans. After all, is the internet not a dangerous place, especially for the young and impressionable? Who among us has not been appalled upon hearing that someone’s seven-year-old was gifted an iPhone for Christmas? Or felt aghast that British teenagers are more likely to use social media than to be living full-time with two loving parents?
There is plenty of unpleasantness online, as there is indeed in everyday life. Some online content is judged poorly merely because it fails to align with the cultural establishment. Some because it promotes genuine violence, misogyny (or misandry) or racism, from which adults should be dissuaded, and younger children should be shielded as much as possible.
The question is, will offering the state yet more power remedy these issues? Can we even trust it to identify where there are real problems, and where there is mere hysteria?
First, there was the suspiciously biased discernment about which platforms seemed to be included in the Government’s ban, which specifically named Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X/Twitter. Bluesky, the left-leaning X copycat site which grew in protest at Elon Musk’s acquisition of the latter site, was conspicuously absent from that initial list. Technology Secretary Liz Kendall later scurried onto the airwaves to insist the app was always intended to fall under the ban.
Musk may be a brash character, but with him at the helm, X has become a rare haven of freedom of expression on the internet. The platform was already a key forum for online debate, but it is now fundamental in disseminating information about a slew of consequential issues. While the site’s unflinching support for free discourse inevitably means it hosts wildly distasteful characters, is it not better that we might see what our opponents are thinking in order to counter them?
Anecdotally speaking, I have witnessed how X has helped counter the narrative of the assisted suicide lobby, which has frequently traded in hissy fits to advance its cause. Just last month, Peter Bedford MP was ridiculed first by The Spectator for co-sponsoring the new assisted suicide Bill after telling a constituent via email that he was against resurrecting it “in the near future”, and again by X users circulating evidence of the correspondence after he accused the magazine of bias. Many a viral post has also exposed how the policy has pressured the elderly, disabled and impoverished into early deaths in Canada and beyond, issuing a stark warning to these isles.
Then there is the resurgence of interest in the grooming gangs scandal. Many Britons were vaguely aware of the issue, and wrongly assumed it to be consigned to a handful of highly publicised historic episodes in deprived northern towns like Rotherham and Rochdale. X resurrected interest in the ongoing scandal, and catalysed efforts such as Adam Wren’s “Open Justice UK” initiative to crowdfund the purchase of pricey court transcripts that reveal the brutality and extent of the issue. Obviously, the nitty-gritty of these problems has no place in the playroom, but I see no reason why some teenagers might not wish to read about them, as I once did. Why should their information be restricted by the same rotten institutions that allowed these scandals to unfold?
YouTube, which has long rivalled television and the mainstream media, will also be included in the ban. While it would be unwise for, say, a five-year-old to be watching political podcasts and war documentaries on the platform, this is clearly not the case for many teenagers. That “YouTube for Kids” will be permitted hardly remedies this loss, given that it is essentially an alternative to CBeebies. The state is not equipped to judge whether a child is yet old enough to watch Hitler’s Henchmen online; parents are. On the other hand, it still remains unclear how enforceable this ban will be. Will many parents not simply allow their children to use their identity documents to log into an “adult” account anyhow?
Existing laws already cover the promotion of, say, terrorism and child sexual abuse online. Where laws do not or cannot go far enough, for example the proliferation of online bullying and pornography (the latter the establishment has few moral qualms over), should it not be up to actual families and parents to mitigate harm? Indeed, it is surely the explosion of family breakdown and decline in respect for parental authority that has precipitated the unfettered use of social media by unshepherded children.
We should not take the state’s word for it that they suddenly have children’s best interests at heart. We must reject implications that the same partisan political class that happily ignored scandals like that of the rape gangs, and who have even labelled pro-lifers as “extremists”, know better than you what information you or your children should be exposed to.
Labour’s deputy leader Lucy Powell, who wants the ban to go yet further, is the same MP who sparked outrage by implying that concerns about grooming gangs amounted to “dog whistle politics”. While she later apologised and attempted to clarify her intentions, this pig-eared approach suggests she and her colleagues could hardly be trusted to judge a village marrow-growing contest, never mind what information is “harmful” to adults and children.
Like it or not – and the current Government clearly does not – the internet is now a vital part of the public square. It offers as much rubbish as it does pearls of wisdom.
We must keep in mind that when it comes to children’s freedoms their own mothers (and fathers), not ministers, usually know best. It is the state’s usurpation of the family that precipitated so many of our modern malaises – egging on more of it will not ameliorate them.
