Social media platforms allow users to interact with others, have conversations, share information and create web content. There are many forms, including games, blogs, wikis, social networking sites, photo-sharing sites, instant messaging, video-sharing sites, podcasts, widgets, virtual worlds, and more. So, with the government considering a ban on social media for children where do we start this impossible task?
Banning social media for children under 14/16 is not only doomed to failure, it will likely exacerbate the problem it is intended to solve. It will cause friction and conflict at home, undermine progressive educational development in and out of the classroom, set children back in a fast-changing world where technology will be the basis for solving problems and working in any role in the future. And, importantly, it will do nothing to solve the crisis in mental health.
Mental health experts, working with children, who understand the complexity of the problems involved, are pushing back against the government’s proposal. Yes, there are harrowing anecdotes involving social media and young people. We know that social media can be successful in promoting conspiracy theories, racism, misogyny and hatred. Bullying, always a problem with children and teenagers, has become an epidemic on social media; revenge imaging is apparently rife, as is the transmission of abusive images, but the best way to counter cruel and negative behaviour is by education.
Communication researchers are finding no causal link between social media and mental health. There are coincidences and correlations in the evidence, but just as the body of research demonstrated, on the effects of media violence on children, media is one component of the problem and often not the major one.
The home and school environment, relationships with peers, the range of activities a person gets involved with and isolation are all factors. Without question, lockdown was a big issue — and if you live in the United States, where much of the data on social media is coming from — it is a major concern for kids whether they can go to school each day without being shot.
Today there are calls by paediatricians, concerned parents and now government to ban social media for children to counter an assortment of health problems, including brain damage, obesity, eye damage, postural problems, sleep deprivation, along with a host of mental and psychological problems. But to mediate the problems predicted from “excessive” media usage, a creative and visionary solution, rather than a censorious approach should be sought.
We know children’s total daily media use (including multi-tasking with up to three devices at once) has been close to double figures for more than a decade. Mobile phones have become an arm attachment for many youngsters who also sleep with them under their pillows. They see nothing new or remarkable in these devices which have become an essential part of their world and mastery of their use has become a necessary life skill, as important as reading and writing, for living successfully.
Social media are certainly a tool kids turn to when the going gets rough, but equally they are tools to create. There is evidence that smartphones were a lifeline to children during COVID. They allowed users to form aspirational and inspirational communities and play together, they allowed schooling to continue and minted a generation of self-starters.
Kids today are a different breed. We do underestimate their ingenuity, resilience, their drive for engagement and their enterprise, the creative ways by which they sort out their world and their social relationships. Small children, not capable of putting words together, can now access digital content on phones and tablets. By five or six, kids can use social media to learn and stay in touch with parents and others. By seven to ten, they are creating content by commenting on friends’ posts and by eleven they are sharing personal photos, videos, stories and memes. Because their media environment is not under the control of parents or teachers as it used to be, the distinctions between childhood and youth are blurring as maturity and “knowing” come at an earlier age.
Every invention which has expanded communication, from the printing press onwards — comic books, movies, television, gaming and now social media — has led to claims such media are contributing to the decline of civilisation and the destruction of childhood. The unpredictable world of AI is creating further fear. So far, most of this hyperbolic critique has proven to be grossly over-stated.
Without technology, human extinction could be inevitable, and it will be young people who must deal with the serious crises now facing the planet to adapt and transition to a different world. In this process, we need educational reform, government intervention to insist the tech titans meet their obligations and parents stepping up to participate in a venture to reform what has become a toxic culture.
We know there are hazards for children in this online world, so media literacy is vital. Pre-school is not too soon to begin media literacy education as ideas and habits are shaped early. We need a curriculum in schools that teaches understanding, providing lessons on appropriate use of technology; of the care that needs to be taken online; when to turn on and turn off; what is factual news and information; that persuasion is mixed in with entertainment to influence our behaviour and attitudes; that our views and beliefs are manipulated.
We need tech-savvy teachers who can nurture children’s voracious appetites for learning. We need an industry with innovative thinkers designing content, both for, and with, them.
Alongside educational reform, it is essential to call these tech titans to account. They are too big and out of control, knowingly seeking to make addicts of our children and control our thinking. Governments should start demanding Facebook, X, TikTok, et al, meet their obligations, financially and ethically; not only to pay for their news content, but to help parents control and limit their children’s smartphone use. Parents must play their part as well and know how their young children engage with social media,
It makes no sense to try to exclude children in their most formative years from access to social media, forcing them to “power down” when they enter the classroom. If this negative thinking and inertia from government continues, the disconnection between children’s everyday lives and their experience of formal education will grow from a gap to a chasm and schools as we know them, like traditional media institutions, will become redundant.
