Teens banned from social media - what next?

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0:06Hi everyone, it's Zara McDonald and Michelle Andrews here. Hi. That's Michelle Andrews. And that's Zara McDonald. We're from the Shameless Podcast, the pop culture podcast for smart people who love dumb stuff. Yeah, on Mondays we cover pop culture analysis, think Netflix's Lamar Odom documentary, the great unfollowing of pregnant women and the tangled web of celebrity GoFundMes on Thursdays. Zaz, what do we do? It's what we call the quick and dirty. So it's a recap of the biggest pop culture headlines that week. Whatever you need an explainer on, we have got you. And then on Fridays, we do Dumb Stuff Fridays.

0:38Yes, we're three times weekly. Three times weekly. Search for Shameless in your favourite podcast app now.

0:49There's problems with the way that you can identify somebody as under 16. 70 % of the children who'd got around the band described it as easy. Welcome to The Interface, the show that decodes how tech is rewiring your week and your world. I'm Karen Howe. I'm Thomas Germain. And I'm Nicky Wolf. Today on The Interface, the UK bans teens from social media. What happens next? Why are AI companies getting involved in nuclear fusion? And is Siri finally going to be good?

1:29This past week has been absolutely insane for tech news. Yeah, a lot going on. There were literally so many massive stories, one of which was that SpaceX IPO'd and Elon Musk became the world's first trillionaire. Congratulations. So exciting for all of us. You just cannot wrap your mind around how big this number is. It's actually, there have been studies that have shown that the human brain is unable to accurately assess how much a trillion is. But if you were to stack one trillion pennies on top of each other, that would literally get you to the moon and back twice. That's a lot of pennies. It's funny you should say that, Karen.

2:18If you, a trillion dollars is enough to give every mouse on the planet$200. $200? What? If you were a mouse, what would you do with$200? What is the mouse population? I mean... There are actually... There are fewer mice on the planet, slightly fewer mice than humans. I'm so glad I know that fact now. The rest of the episode is going to be us advocating for a mouse universal basic income. Universal mouse income. I think we could really... Yeah. We're talking about the big issues today. Another massive story that happened this past week was Anthropic faced off with the U.S. government again. For longtime listeners of The Interface, we have talked about Anthropic, competitor to open AI, having a spat with the Department of War.

3:05This time, what happened was the U.S. government put export controls, which is a specific mechanism that the government has power to do, on Anthropic's latest AI model, Claude Fable, which, if you remember, we did an episode on Claude Mythos, this supposedly super scary AI model that was too dangerous to release. Anthropic then added safeguards and renamed the model Fable to release it. And the US government decided, no, no, you cannot release it to any foreign nationals, which means that they cannot release it at all. So Anthropic had to pull the model. But we're not going to talk about any of those things.

3:51Yeah. No, we're done. That's it. Yeah. Let's get to the real news. We're going to talk about a small island off the coast of Europe has just done something massive. You may have heard of it from... Used to have a big empire. Yeah. So what we're actually going to talk about is the fact that the UK banned or announced that it will ban children under the age of 16 from social media. The government has not officially clarified exactly which social media platforms it is going to ban. But it has said that generally speaking, they are going to ban platforms whose purpose is to enable social interaction and allow users to post content.

4:38So they've already said, yes, they're going to ban Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook X. No, they're not going to ban WhatsApp and Signal. And they're also potentially going to consider overnight curfews and breaks in doom scrolling for teenagers under 18. This is something I think I could use. A legal bedtime would be good for me. You know, like the government says I must go to sleep. Yeah, I guess you don't have to go to bed. You just have to get off. Exactly. You know, you could just raw dog it for the rest of the night. So between the ages of 16 and 18, you can go on social media, just not at night.

5:15Exactly. The UK is following in the footsteps of Australia, which implemented a social media ban for its kids in December of 2025. And the government has already indicated that it is planning on implementing, putting out the policy by Christmas of this year. So it'll be roughly a year after the Australia ban. And then the implementation would happen in around spring of 2027. So it's kind of an interesting moment because I think when Australia did it, it seemed a bit anomalous. But now that the UK is also following in the footsteps, there is this question now of whether this is going to kick off further momentum and have more countries around the world ban social media for kids.

6:01And generally speaking, this is a move that is actually incredibly popular among parents. So this was a move done with significant amounts of public consultation. There was actually 116 ,000 responses to government consultation, period. And there was a poll that came out from YouGov, a data analytics and market research platform that found that 77 % of parents in the UK with kids under 18 support a social media ban like this. Interestingly, though, only 45 % think that it would actually be effective. 46 % think that it could potentially not be effective at all. That's a very British level of cynicism in that whole.

6:52Like, yes, it would be a good idea. Nah, it's not going to work, though, is it? What I'm reading from this survey is that parents think something needs to change. And they are at this point willing to try the nuclear option, just banning everything outright and just seeing what happens because the cost of keeping the platforms around as is they have determined is too high. It's interesting that what it seems like parents are in favor of is the feeling that right now, they are taking all the onus of responsibility on policing their children's internet use, social media use, and this idea that, you know, all the parents I know are exhausted by that experience, and they're like, if the government can have a go at it, that would be really good if someone else can take that responsibility away from them.

7:45Now, there are some pressure groups that are not nearly as positive on it. Right. A lot of them have pointed out the Australia example. They're saying that there's problems with the way that you can identify somebody as under 16, whether you use an ID-based verification or a facial recognition-based verification. So obviously both of those have huge flaws and problems with them. Five companies are already under investigation for noncompliance, including YouTube, Meta, TikTok. There was a study by the Molly Rose Foundation which is a children's digital rights NGO. Three-fifths of 12 to 15-year-olds who did have accounts on social media before still have those accounts.

8:29There have been lots of case studies that the Australian government found. They did a three-month report where a 14-year-old can game the age recognition, the facial recognition software and just convince it that they are 16 and over. 70 % of the children at the Molly Rose Foundation polled who'd got around the ban described it as easy. So there's implementation problems, there's conceptual problems that just goes to demonstrate these things are not easy to implement. One caveat to this survey, though, is that experts have pointed out that six months is really not enough to actually understand a ban like this.

9:12There's not actually enough data to analyze the effects. And a lot of parents, while they understand that their kids are still getting on these platforms, are quite optimistic about what this kind of ban does for kids that will never get accounts. I mean, right now we're talking about the kids who had social media that are in this weird transition where it was taken away from them. But parents are holding out hope that for the generations that never had accounts, like they will end up not having a social media as sort of an integrated part of their upbringing. And that will then lead them to have more healthy, robust offline experiences.

9:55Yeah, and the backdrop to which this is happening in the UK is lots of funding has been cut for social programs, youth programs, youth clubs, youth groups. There are rules being brought in. People don't like when teenagers hang out in parks. There was this thing we talked about briefly when we talked about Helena Syndrome, where you can get shops that have a high-pitched noisemaker that push teenagers away from hanging out. It's a sound that only young people can hear. It's like super high-pitched and it's very annoying and they like put it to like keep kids away. Like we got to give them an alternative.

10:27We have to do something for children aside from saying like, oh, we don't go on social media and then I guess everything will be fine. I don't know if I buy it. Where are kids going to hang out? So it's worth saying that this is deeply unpopular among tech companies in particular in that meta YouTube snap, they've all come out pretty strongly against this impending ban. And they have specifically mentioned that there's a risk to isolating teens and taking away the benefits of social media while also potentially pushing teens to unregulated, anonymous, or less safe options. But interestingly, it's actually not just the tech companies that are pushing back.

11:07There are some online safety experts that I've mentioned as well. They don't think these kinds of harsh bans are actually going to keep kids safer online. And indeed, they also say similarly to the tech companies that it could just pull kids away from real social connections that they're developing in online communities that can be quite beneficial for their development. I think the social media companies have a point here about pushing people to more dangerous parts of the internet. We have tried this with pornography now. In most or something like half of U.S. states, you have to pass an age verification test to get onto a pornography site.

11:47And the thing that has happened is all of the super mainstream sites are following these rules. And then these sketchier sites from other countries that can't be prosecuted aren't. So if you're going to go on the internet, and we can all agree that the internet could be a dangerous place, you're probably a little better off on a giant platform that is more moderated than a small one where there's more weird and illegal and disturbing and upsetting stuff happen. That's exactly what's going to happen here with social media. If it is harder for kids to get on social media, The place that they are going to go is gigantic group chats on WhatsApp and Telegram and other parts of the internet, which functionally work just like social media, right?

12:29It's just like people posting content. But are completely invisible from the outside. And I think a lot of the same problems will just crop up there. It seems like a very blunt and not particularly thoughtful measure. And the other thing that people have pointed out is that also coming in very soon in the UK is a reduction of the voting age to 16. And a lot of people have made the point, and I think this is a pretty good point, that like it or not, social media is the main source of news. It is where the discourse happens. How do you become an informed voter at 16 without access to any of these spaces?

13:10And obviously, places like X are not, there's huge downsides to them being the core source of news. Unfortunately, they just are now. That is the information world we live in. Well, but I think that's also because the kids have access to social media right now. But when you lose those channels, I think news consumption behavior would shift. I mean, I think they're just not going to consume it. I don't think kids are going to be like, God, I can't go on Instagram. I guess I will go to BBC.com. Like, that's not... Well, when I was growing up, when I was growing up, there was a kids' newspaper that was put out by the Sunday Times.

13:50It was called the Fun Day Times. I read it, you know, every week. Yeah, I read kids' newspapers. Yeah, I did that too. As much as I like that idea, I don't think that's where it's going. There was this really interesting point that Ursula von der Leyen said, she's the president of the EU Commission. She was speaking at a G7 meeting on Monday, and she said the debate is not whether young people should have access to social media. The debate is whether social media should have access to our children and teenagers and when. And I think that's exactly right. There's a genuine question now of whether the current implementation of social media can really deliver the benefits that social media could have while protecting kids from those harms.

14:37That's exactly my problem with these bans, though, is built in is this assumption that there's nothing that we can do to change the status quo, that social media is bad. Oh, well, that's just how it is. So let's get kids off of it. What about doing something to address the problems of social media, right? In the United States, we've got laws protecting children's privacy, but not adults' privacy, right? So like, oh, the privacy problem is so bad. Oh, well, like we'll protect kids from it. No, just pass a law that regulates how you can collect and use people's data. The same applies here. We have a problem with the way that social media companies operate.

15:11Why not do something about it? I think it's also interesting how this is going to change social media, right? Like so much of popular culture comes from young people and teenagers, right? That's how it's always been. They're like the main drivers of cultural change. We could be looking at a world where it's just like only old people on Instagram. I mean, I guess they'll still be like 18 and 19 year olds. 16 and up is not old. Yeah, I'm exaggerating. But there is going to be a big change, right? Like the kind of content that's online, what people are making and what gets popular. If this whole cohort of young people is eliminated, there's going to be a dramatic shift.

15:50Kind of hard to predict what it'll be like, but like the stuff that you see online will be different. And there's also a chance that the UK is one of the is one of the first dominoes to fall. And this will be coming to other countries. There is already legislation in the US Senate co-sponsored by Ted Cruz and Chris Murphy, which is kind of unusual for a piece of legislation to have that level of Republicans at the end of the spectrum supporting it. Yeah. And apparently, according to one poll, at least 64 % of Americans are in favor of banning kids from social media. It would probably be a little bit harder to implement in the US because of the First Amendment.

16:30We have much stronger free speech protections in the US than there are in the UK and most of Europe. So even if it does get passed, it might not survive the courts. But this kind of like blunt thinking is how American legislators have been moving. So I would be surprised if we don't see something like this in some way in the United States and the rest of the world very soon.

16:55Hi, everyone. It's Zara McDonald and Michelle Andrews here. Hi. That's Michelle Andrews. And that's Zara McDonald. We're from the Shameless Podcast, the pop culture podcast for smart people who love dumb stuff. Yeah. On Mondays, we cover pop culture analysis. Think Netflix's Lamar Odom documentary, The Great Unfollowing of Pregnant Women, and the tangled web of celebrity GoFundMes. On Thursdays, Zaz, what do we do? It's what we call the quick and dirty. So it's a recap of the biggest pop culture headlines that week. Whatever you need an explainer on, we have got you. And then on Fridays, we do Dumb Stuff Fridays.

17:27Yes, we're three times weekly. Three times weekly. Search for Shameless in your favorite podcast app now.

17:36Okay, I'm psyched to bring this next story to you guys because I've been doing a lot of reporting and actually been obsessed for years and years with fusion power. But suddenly, Silicon Valley and particularly AI companies have joined me in that obsession. Fusion power, just really briefly. Nuclear fusion is the power that, that's the energy that powers the sun, right? We are talking about building small suns on planet Earth that we can potentially get near limitless amounts of energy from. This is kind of the holy grail for power. Right. And has been for a really long time. And fusion, as opposed to fission, right?

18:20Fission is how nuclear reactors work. Now you split the atoms apart. Fusion, you smash the atoms together. And this is, it's cleaner. It's like unfathomably more efficient. Infinite energy, essentially, if you could figure out how to do it. But so far, it's a little bit science fiction, right? And it's been science fiction for 40 years. Yeah, like you do it in a lab under very specific circumstances, but you can't like, you have to put more energy into making it happen than you get out. They haven't figured out how to do it. Right, exactly. There have been a couple of times where there's been, so there have been fusion reactions.

18:55We have created small suns. There's one in France. There's one in the UK. There's one in the US, in Los Alamos. They have a few times created a net energy gain, which means huge amounts of energy have to go into making a fusion reaction. And then that fusion reaction just about produces more energy by tiny, tiny factors than it's put in. And only just, and that's after decades and decades of work. Here's a sign of how long fusion has been just around the corner. When I was in high school, I, fusion was an exciting new technology. Yeah, yeah, it was between the world wars. Yeah, right. We'd be talking late 90s, early 2000s.

19:39I was in high school and became obsessed with nuclear fuel. I don't know if you guys know the TV show Robot Wars. Maybe it's called something different in the US. BattleBots. Yeah, BattleBots. Yeah, it was like fighting robots. We wanted to build a robot that could go on and fight on BattleBots on Robot Wars. And we were planning on, we were like, it's so close. We can build one with a nuclear fusion reactor on it. Because people then were saying fusion is a few years away and they are still saying exactly the same to this day. 25, 30 years later. I love all of the technologies that have been 10 years away for 100 years.

20:21Nonetheless, Sam Altman now has. Sam Altman, the OpenAI founder, has a fusion startup called Helion. A few days ago, they just raised half a billion dollars in a new seed funding round. There's lots of other random fusion companies popping up. We'll get into those in a little bit. But the problem with fusion is it's really, really, really, really hard. And we are still very early on in its development. But Karen, I don't know if you can speak to why AI companies are suddenly obsessed with this. I've actually been reading a relevant book about this. So I wanted to give it a shout out. One of my favorite kinds.

21:00This is called Nuclear is Not the Solution. Oh. That basically carry on, Brian. Talk about giving the whole thing away in the title. I'm just, yeah. The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change by M.V. Ramana. And he talks about how billionaires, tech billionaires, have actually long been obsessed with nuclear, not just fusion, but also fission. And specifically because it kind of helps feed into their ideology that we can continue to grow forever with infinite resources and support that with the physics of our Earth without getting accelerating runaway climate change if we can unlock nuclear as like a viable energy path.

21:49And so the reason why we have seen this obsession for a long time, and it's become even more of an intense obsession now is because of the AI industry and the extraordinary degree of energy that they need to power their supercomputing facilities that they are building all around the world. Recently, OpenAI announced that they are going to try to build a 10 gigawatt supercomputing facility in Ohio. 10 gigawatts is roughly the average power demand of New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco combined. Oh. So that is the amount of power that they want to direct to one supercomputing facility.

22:35That's... And... Wow. Yeah. Yep. Private nuclear companies that are invested in biotech billionaires, which has been an ongoing thing for many, many years, are structured in a way that ensures that the tech billionaires will actually be able to profit before the nuclear reactor has ever produced energy. I had a friend of mine who's a quantum physicist who gave the Sam Altman Helion stuff to look through. He looked through what they were doing and he was like, the scale of how far they've got to go, they are talking about, they're promising that they can build a Ferrari when they've just about jury-rigged a spark plug, let alone an engine.

23:26Yeah, and this book actually talks about Sam Altman specifically and how he has put his investments in a number of different nuclear companies. It's not just Helion. There's also nuclear fission companies that he's put his money into. And the way that he structures the deals is such that it doesn't actually matter if the reactor is ultimately going to deliver energy to the public. It is ultimately going to deliver returns on investment to the billionaires. And it's not just Altman. It's Bill Gates has long touted nuclear as a solution, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel. You know, it's the whole cast of characters that we've become so familiar with on this show.

24:04And it's not just Silicon Valley. I just reported a story published this week with New World Magazine here in the UK. Huge scoop. A big scoop. I did a scoop, which is that the British government has gone into partnership with a company called TAE Technologies. It's the UK's Atomic Energy Authority, which regulates and invests in fusion power projects. has gone into a partnership with a company called TA Technologies, which is currently going through a merger with Trump Media Inc., which owns Truth Social. It's like the most insane sentence. It's wild, yeah. Trump's social media platform is merging with a nuclear fusion company, which is wild.

24:46That's already, you know, sense that there's money in the water and British government will pay us to do this partnership. So the British government is partnering, essentially, with a company that's owned by Donald Trump. Yeah, correct. Which is wild. And that's part of this gold rush. They're like, if you put the word... It's like fusion is kind of the new... Maybe even not the new. It's one of those things that you can attach to almost anything. We've seen this with, obviously, with the word AI. You can be like, yeah, AI and anything. We saw it with blockchain. You can be like, blockchain for books.

25:20Blockchain for art. Blockchain for anything. and it's just a thing you can say that immediately puts you forward for getting investment into something. Yeah. And the technology is just not there. Hopefully it will be, but it's just not there right now. So my question, and I know this is why you brought all this up, is how will Fusion benefit our podcast? This is a huge opportunity. I don't know about you guys. I never quite got rid of that dream of the Robot Wars BattleBot. So if we can create an interface, Robot Wars, If you are a nuclear fusion scientist and you want to help us build a killer robot, please get in touch.