Very soon, children under the age of 16 will be legally barred from using social media in many countries. Earlier this week, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said his government would ban social media access for under-16s. His government also plans to restrict “certain harmful features” on other online services for under-18s.
So far, there has not been any indication of an intention by our government to ban children from using social media. But there would probably be strong support from parents and religious organisations for such a move.
Emma Sadleier Berkowitz, a social media lawyer, has begun drafting a proposed bill to ban child access to these platforms in SA. She admits that any ban will be hard to implement.
Indeed, due to the difficulty of enforcement, the bans on social media use by children may be a lot more show than substance, at least for the moment.
Late last year, Australia passed a law banning under-16s from ten social media platforms. If these platforms do not implement age verification measures, they could face fines of up to the equivalent of US $35 million.
A ban on social media for under-15s is being considered by the French Parliament. And Austria, Canada, Greece, Indonesia, Malaysia, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, and Turkey are all at various stages on the path to passing legislation to ban social media for children. Such measures have also been discussed in Germany.
Even if such bans are difficult to enforce, they still have merit. The bans will make it more difficult for most children to use social media, and as technology improves, so will enforcement.
The danger is that the reasons for the bans will be used as excuses and a gateway by governments to expand surveillance and control over internet use and society. And the technology that develops to ban children from social media could be used to restrict legitimate democratic access to sites.
Banning children from social media is a good vote winner. What politicians want to be labelled as hostile to families?
The case against access to social media by children is based on the idea that its use is addictive and can amplify anxiety, sleeplessness, and depression, and mental health problems, particularly among children.
To gain and retain viewers, there is almost certainly a large element of Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) that keeps users glued to social media. And as “friends” post pictures of themselves constantly achieving success, the more sensitive will feel left behind and inadequate. Not all are affected, but a sizeable number are.
Just being a child that has social contact presents risks, but there is a case to be made that social media acts to amplify these. And teenagers with anxieties might be especially vulnerable to some of the evils of social media.
The argument that bans on social media use by children are an infringement of free speech is valid. But if evident harm is done, there is still a case for such bans. In his essay “On Liberty,” the 19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill argued for near-absolute free speech. He said there should be restrictions if free speech caused harm to others, through, for example, the direct incitement to violence of a mob. He believed that free speech should hold even in the case of a false or partially true statement, as these force society to defend its beliefs. That helps create the “marketplace of ideas” through which society advances, he believed.
But in the age of social media, it is not the case that there is an even playing field in countering misinformation or hate speech, which can easily go viral.
In the case of children, do the arguments of unrestricted free speech hold?
Children, on the whole, cannot make the same sort of judgements on risk and the quality of information as adults. Further, social media does have a strong addictive quality. That means rational decisions, which require reasoning and accounting for consequences, cannot always be made by children.
It is parents who should be controlling their children’s access to social media. After all, there is the technology available on devices to do precisely that. But they often can’t work the technology and easily give in to their children’s demands. And children easily bypass parental restrictions on screen time and social media use.
Even the state will have problems in enforcing a social media ban. The big social media platforms can use face recognition technology to ensure that children do not log on to their apps. But those who try hard enough will be able to bypass the restrictions. To expect that artificial intelligence will allow the social media ban to be effectively enforced is naive.
Banning an activity will simply mean that those who want the experience will find it elsewhere. In the case of social media, sites offering children a more addictive and far more harmful experience are bound to fill the gap. And because of the demand and the lure of illegality, these sites will proliferate. They might do a great deal more harm than the existing platform.
The arguments about the problems in enforcement are all valid, but given the high penalties, social media platforms might just find ways to make the ban more effective over time. And better technology will be used to deal with the sites that do not adhere to state bans on use by children.
As pure as the motives for bans on access to social media might be, these bans are part of the efforts by governments to exercise far greater control over the internet.
In the UK, police arrested approximately 30 people a day for offensive online speech last year. These arrests were made under laws which make offensive, menacing, or hateful speech a criminal offence. For Mill, mere offence, shock, or hurt was insufficient to amount to harm to others if it did not also directly incite violence.
In SA, a wide array of digital laws, including the Cybercrimes Act, give the authorities considerable power to act against criminal activity as well as hate speech and the display of images deemed offensive. And the government does have the authority, albeit under strict legal conditions, to block access to internet sites.
Governments usually want more power, and blocking access for children to social media poses the risk that they will seek legislation to block other content without having to obtain court orders.
China provides the model of draconian control over the internet. The “Great Firewall” blocks access to foreign social media and news outlets.
Internet access is restricted on mobile devices overnight for anyone under the age of 18, smartphone usage is capped by age, and minors can only play online games for an hour on Fridays and weekends.
We might not be headed in the direction of the Chinese model, but we had best be very careful about where we are headed.
Good intentions are the pathway to hell.
[Image: https://www.pexels.com/photo/tablet-showing-icons-13570156/]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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