The potential of a social media ban for under 16s in the UK

In the aftermath of the world’s first social media ban for young people that took effect in Australia in December, the government has launched a consultation on banning social media for under 16s in the UK, which has become the most discussed of series of measures which it says are intended to “protect young people’s wellbeing”. Protecting children speaks of course to the deepest moral value of most individuals; it also speaks to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, where the article 3 dictates that the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration in all actions concerning children . . . ensuring their protection and care is prioritised.

The rationale underpinning the launch of the consultation is that parents “feel unprepared to deal with the pace at which social media has changed”, as children are “bombarded with information sent to you by algorithms devised to create money by tech companies”. For a sociologist, this argument is not new: there is a robust tradition of research that critiques the techno-economic nature of social networking platforms and how their revenue-motivated technological design influences communication (van Dijck et al., 2018; Abu-Ayyash, 2024).

As a sociologist, I believe it is important to approach a consultation that promises to deliver changes for millions of people as free as possible from anxiety, which is often made more oppressive by moralism towards social media. So, what can be said of social media if a disenchanted outlook is embraced? We can start from an algid observation: social networking software supports the emersion of fluid social formations (Goyanes et al., 2021). In this sense, they are not qualitatively different from clubs that have supported the emersion of social groups for thousands of years, as far as historic records allows us to see.

Social networking software instructs new participants to create a profile, writing themselves into being (boyd, 2007) associating their person with cultural icons and popular media resources (Zhang, 2024). This is not different from the genesis of social groups such as circles of friends or subcultures. However, there is a substantial difference; in fact, more than a difference, but it is sufficient to highlight two. First, social  networking software utilises the capacity of electronic media to detach socialisation from compresence. Second, by utilising the technological capabilities of the digital medium to absorb and reconstitute other communication media, a profile may attach collections of photos, music and videos to claim symbolic and cultural capital (Zararsiz and Ayaşlioğlu, 2024). The work of assembling artifacts builds up the complexity of a profile,  increasing the variety of expectations that may be attributed to the online profile by others.

As they create a profile on the social network, a person becomes a profile. A profile may instigate digitally mediated friendship. Within the social network users not only  claim personhood by participating in communication; they also validate the digital personhood of profiles they connected with. This double movement, claiming personhood and validating personhood,  while compresence is made redundant, represents an irresistible attraction for children and adults alike.

Thus, in the limited space of this blog, I would invite consideration for one of those “unintended consequences” that could descend from the forbidding the use of social media for under 16s.  Banning social media would generate an urgent issue which should be carefully considered by the consultation exercise: the construction and negotiation of personhood is an essential  social process that responds to non-negotiable needs. It is true, the construction of personhood precedes social media, as it is true that the circulation of information precedes mass media. I believe that many would not be reassured about the consequence of the ban of mass media by nostalgic references to the era of oral accounts and memoirs riding on the back of horses.

Another “unintended consequence” of a possible ban should be mentioned, because it affects another fundamental children’s right: the right of self-determination. Banning the use of social media would generate a sort of “agency-draught”, drying out the tide of active social participation facilitated by social media (Raza et al., 2022) fulfilling another principle of the UNCRC: granting children the right to freedom of expression, allowing them to seek, receive, and share information and ideas of all kinds (orally, in writing, art, or any chosen media) across borders (article 13). A non-exhaustive list of the most recent examples include Facebook-based groups assisting the recruitment, organisation and dissemination of information to protesters during the “ten protest” in Israel (Lev-On, 2019); coordinating and documenting the #EndSARS protests in Nigeria (Uwalaka and Nwala, 2023); discussing and critically reviewing political communication in the run-up to general elections in Norway (Skogerbø and Karlsen, 2021); functioning as nodes in networks of peer-education and support during the Covid19 pandemic in Vietnam (Do Van Huan et al., 2024).

In addition to these sociological observations that invite a thoughtful, non-moralistic approach the consultation, I would advance another point, this one more philosophical and political: how the coming of the consultation is being debated, from both ends of the argument, appears to me another cultural object generated by a discourse centred on children’s capability, on what they can and cannot do, on the rungs they occupy in the latter of human development. We know that any discourse constructs a shiny solid reality by obscuring other reality. In this case, focusing on children’s capacity to handle social media obscures the responsibility for adults to imagine a society where social media, and more broadly communication mediated by computers, fulfils an essential social function without viable equivalent alternatives. [1]

[1] For the full references to the works cited in this blog and a more comprehensive sociological reflection on social media: Farini, F. 2025 Web-based groups as autopoietic social systems. A cybernetic perspective. Communication and the Public. https://doi.org/10.1177/20570473251392626

Professor Federico Farini

Federico Farini is Professor of Sociology at the University of Northampton, and Visiting Professor at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy). He leads the Centre for Psychological and Sociological Studies.