Where children have been harmed through online abuse, grooming, bullying, exploitation or dangerous online challenges, grief deserves respect before argument. The pressure for stronger protection is understandable. These are real dangers, and no discussion of policy should make light of them.
The Government’s proposal to ban social media access for children under sixteen is presented as a humane measure. Children, we are told, will be “given back their childhoods.” The phrase is attractive, but revealing. It places the State in the role of national parent, stepping in where families, schools and ordinary adult authority are assumed to have failed.
The first point should be granted plainly: social media can harm children. It can expose them to grooming, sexual exploitation, violent pornography, bullying, blackmail, self-harm material, eating-disorder content, addictive design and dangerous online challenges. Some children are damaged by what they see. Some are manipulated by strangers. Some are humiliated by peers. Some are drawn into secrecy before any adult knows what has happened.
But recognising the danger does not settle the question of remedy. A ban may reassure adults more than it protects children. Many children will find ways round restrictions: older siblings’ accounts, borrowed phones, VPNs, gaming chats, messaging apps, foreign-hosted sites, or platforms less visible to the regulator. The law may close the front door while leaving side doors and back doors open.
The second point is less comfortable: parents and adults need to recover responsibility. This does not mean that parents can supervise every click, every message, every video or every algorithmic recommendation. No ordinary parent can do that. But adults can do more than hand the matter over to government. They can talk. They can ask. They can listen. They can bring phones and social media into ordinary family conversation, instead of allowing them to become a private world that adults rarely see or discuss.
Even in good homes, children may not tell adults what is troubling them. They may lack the words, feel ashamed, or fear being misunderstood. That is why protection begins with ordinary conversation. A child who can say, “I saw something,” or “I am frightened,” is already less alone.
The third point is political. The Government is using a real problem to introduce a new form of digital control. Under the Online Safety Act, platforms are being pushed towards “highly effective” age assurance. Ofcom lists methods such as open banking, photo-ID matching, facial age estimation, mobile-network operator checks, credit-card checks, digital identity services and email-based age estimation. Self-declaration is not considered sufficient.
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Here the child-protection argument becomes a digital-identity argument. If children must be excluded from social media, adults must prove they are adults. Once access to ordinary online spaces depends on proving age or identity, digital identification enters everyday life by the back door. The mechanism may be introduced for children, but it reaches adults.
Ofcom’s age-assurance guidance lists several methods capable of being “highly effective”: open banking, photo-ID matching, facial age estimation, mobile-network operator checks, credit-card checks, digital identity services and email-based age estimation. Self-declaration is not considered sufficient.
The issue is not whether children should be protected. Of course they should. The issue is whether protection strengthens families and adult responsibility, or weakens them by transferring moral authority to the State.
Children do not need abandonment. They need guidance, truthful adults, patient speech, firm boundaries and enough freedom to grow into judgement. They need protection from predators and exploitative systems. They also need protection from silence, shame and moral vacancy.
The candle that lights the child to bed should be held by those who know the child. When that light is taken from the family and handed to the State, we lose control. We have surrendered responsibility to an authority that can regulate childhood, but cannot love the child. Children are not being given back their childhoods. They are being handed a cardboard replica of it.
