Will a ban keep the UK’s kids off social media?

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0:06Today, the UK's social media ban for under-16s.

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1:16Today is a big moment for our country. This is a big step. real change for our children and our future. On Monday, Keir Starmer made a big announcement. Because today I can announce that the government will ban access to social media for all children under the age of 16. Nine out of ten parents support the ban, according to the government. But children, well, they are not quite so keen. So what do you think of their social media ban for under-16s? Does it include YouTube? Yeah. I'm probably just going to watch every single YouTube video in the world before then. This is 11-year-old Garvey talking to his mum, Rosie.

2:04My friends, they're not very happy with the decision either. So they're probably... What have they said? They've said Keir Starmer's so annoying.

2:17Snapchat, for example, is one of the best things that's happened to me. and that sounds really sad and this is what this generation has come to but I don't think adults understand it's not going to affect them that is how we talk to our friends and fit in this is grace she's 13 I just genuinely love how I can communicate with my friends but also tiktok like I love sending memes to my friends and that sounds like little things but we've grown up with this in that generation and I think instead of completely removing it we should be allowed to explore it in a safe way. I like watching funny animal videos and seeing what my friends are up to with their stories.

3:01I normally scroll on these apps, but from time to time I post dance videos because I really like dancing. This is Fabio, age 12. I believe I'm mature enough to use these apps because I know if I say anything bad, that will stay on the internet forever and there will be consequences. If everyone knows that, then nothing bad will happen on social media. Fabio's mum Nicola disagrees. I used to let my son post videos of himself dancing. He sold this to me because all of his friends were doing it, so he wanted to connect with them, he wanted to connect with other people in the dance world and he also wanted to see himself improving over time.

3:52I allowed him to do it and then after the first few videos I went and had a look at the viewer analytics and it was all men between the ages of 40 and 60, not other young dancing children and that just was horrible.

4:16So I suppose this law gives them a little bit of protection, but it also gives us parents a legal basis to disallow things, and it's not just mum being a party pooper.

4:34From The Guardian, I'm Helen Pidd. Today in Focus, is this the end of Infinite Scroll for Our Children?

4:46Chris Stokel-Walker, welcome back to Today in Focus. Great to see you. Thanks for having me. So you're a technology journalist who's been following the anti-social media wave across the world very closely in recent years. And Keir Starmer, for reasons that we will probably speculate about a bit later in this episode, announced a pretty draconian ban for the UK on Monday. Can you just tell us first, what exactly is included in this ban, what is not, and how is it going to work in practice? Well, it's exceptionally difficult to actually know, Helen, because as we have probably going to get onto a little bit later on, this seems relatively last minute.

5:20But we understand the broad brushstrokes of what this is going to be. So it's been touted as an Australia Plus approach. Some of the platforms that have been named as being targeted as part of this ban include the likes of YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, a few others as well. That's the Australia part of this. The plus side is where the government is claiming this is really revolutionary. And that, as far as we can tell, seems to encompass two broad areas. Number one, they're going to be tackling live streaming and gaming services. And then also they have this element here of a curfew, which is plus borrowed from China, effectively, where actually if it's a certain time of night, you probably won't be allowed to use your phone if you are not of age.

6:08And which apps are not included in this ban? So messaging apps are seen as outside of the purview of this. That's the one thing that we really do know in detail. So things like WhatsApp you will still be able to use. And what about Telegram, Discord? Are they on the banned list or not? We don't know. I'm not certain that they are. Telegram, obviously, hugely concerning, actually, in terms of all the messaging apps. The latest app that is sounding the alarm is Telegram Messenger, commonly known as Telegram. And just this week, the app's CEO is now under preliminary charges over alleged criminal activity on this platform.

6:44That is probably the one in which you wouldn't want your kid to necessarily be on. Yet there seems to be these odd loopholes that might well be ironed out in the fullness of time by the government. It just, they're not necessarily so strong on the detail at this stage yet. But I think YouTube Kids is also not included, right? So it's not that children can't watch YouTube anymore, but they can only watch the one that has been specially curated for them. Yes, that's correct. They can watch cartoons for five-year-olds if you are a 13-year-old, which I'm sure will thrill the 13-year-olds of the UK.

7:17I mean, that is an interesting distinction, right? Because YouTube sits outside of this whole thing in a weird way, yet is included in a social media ban. And I'm not really certain why, other than perhaps Keir Starmer doesn't like Mr. Beast or something like that. I don't like Mr. Beast. Nobody likes MrBeast, but there's a world of YouTube outside of MrBeast, Helen, which you can watch. And many of the people on there are actually really useful and really informative. Yeah. One of the children that I asked about this, he's called Adam, he's nine and he's from Glasgow. He goes on adult YouTube to watch tutorials.

7:52And I don't think there should be a ban on YouTube for under 16s because some people don't use it just for scrolling and scrolling and stuff like that. and like me people use it for lego tips or how to build and art and miniature painting and drawing tutorials and stuff like that so that's why i don't think there should be a ban on it that touches on i think one of the problems here which is it doesn't feel like this whole thing has been thought through necessarily, because actually you could say, well, it's certain types of content on YouTube that shouldn't be watched, but actually it's just all of YouTube.

8:41And so good luck to you if you are in the GCSE class of 2027, trying to do some last minute revision on YouTube for important, complicated stuff, because you are not going to be able to. And I mean, there were some reports, weren't there, that the onus is going to be on the phone companies, so Apple, Samsung, et cetera, and that when the devices are sold, that they're going to have to be checking who's going to be using it. The government has suggested on Tuesday morning that that isn't the case. So whose responsibility is it going to be to make sure that there isn't a 13, 14, 15 year old who's borrowed somebody else's passport or just simply put in the wrong date of birth when they apply for an account?

9:21Whoever fights the least against the government to have the responsibility for that is the truth, Helen. We've seen this not just in the UK, but we've seen in Europe and elsewhere, there is a game of passing the parcel going on here. And every company in and around the tech space doesn't want to be the one still holding it when the music stops. So we've also seen that the tech companies themselves saying they believe it's not their responsibility and saying, actually, it'll be far easier for the device. Yeah, exactly. Everybody is passing the buck here. They say that it would be easier for this to be a one-size-fits-all approach done on the device.

9:57The government seems to be saying that they want it to be done individually at a social media app by app level. That to me seems like madness, but then truthfully, the whole thing to me seems like madness. Yeah. And Keir Starmer described the ban as a line in the sand for tech companies. As you've already said, they're trying to pass the book to others. But what are their primary objections. I mean, I saw Elon Musk tweeting on X that he called it a censorship law and that the real goal is to enable the UK government to track everyone. I think that's certainly the view of those who ascribe to Donald Trump's sensibilities on this.

10:36And frankly, a lot of the tech sector at the minute is very much playing to the Trump administration because they know that that is the ultimate body that they have to answer to. I think it's not that. I just think it's a really poorly thought through solution. So it is an attempt, I think, to try and tackle a real issue. We've had internal documentation from many of these big companies that has been released through whistleblowers, through reporting by The Guardian and others, saying that actually they believe that there are elements of their apps that are harmful to younger users. But they don't want to say that.

11:15Mr Zuckerberg, did you not have purposely designed the platform to harm children? He may be the CEO of a trillion dollar tech giant. Do you have a message to the parents? But today Mark Zuckerberg was facing not just questions outside court, but also a lengthy cross-examination inside as well. You can imagine that within these social media companies, there is a certain amount of panic about the direction of travel globally over these sorts of issues. And I'm sure like me, you've read the book called Careless People About Life at the Highest Echelons of Facebook. It's by a woman called Sarah Wynne Williams, who worked very closely with Mark Zuckerberg.

11:51There's a gagging order that prevents her from talking about the allegations in the book now. But if you read it, it is clear that actually when countries were taking measures to ban or restrict Facebook, Zuckerberg and co were seriously worried about it. So can we assume then that these bans are causing serious consternation among Zuckerberg and his ilk? Yeah, they are absolutely worried about this. I mean, we only need to look, for instance, at the fact that there has been public lawsuits that have found against these platforms for the harm against Kaylee, KGM, as she was known, a teenager in the United States.

12:28and the fact that after that suit, big tech platforms have subsequently settled before they got to court other actions in a similar sort of vein. So I think there is a recognition here that social media platforms are a bit on the back foot when it comes to these sorts of things and that the tide is turning. Yeah, and let's not forget that it's fantastically lucrative for them, this market. There was research from 2023 which found that the social media companies make$11 billion a year from advertising to American young people. And on Snapchat, nearly half of overall advertising revenue in 2022, so actually ages ago now, was estimated to have come from people aged under 17.

13:09So how worried are they about this really hitting their bottom line? I think that they're a significant market, young people, to these platforms, not necessarily just for the here and now, but for the years to come. The idea of building brand loyalty is a really important thing right so if you say that we are the destination of choice for young people you ingrain in them habits and this is in part i think why the the government's approach of something needs to be done to try and get us out of this kind of horrible vicious cycle of almost addiction to these platforms

13:53Stephen Byrne, you're an executive producer for Guardian Australia and you specialise in short form videos, the kind of videos that end up on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube shorts, which children in the UK will be banned from watching come springtime and which Aussie kids, and you live in Australia of course, have not been able to access in theory for the past six months. How is the ban going so far down under? That's a huge question because when you look at it, it's only been just over six months. So to make any total evaluation of it, I think we'll need a little bit longer in time. We do get this question from the UK all the time.

14:27How is it going? What's happening? There are stats flying around that seven in 10 young people are still on these social media platforms and they're still accessing it either through VPNs or other methods. Speaking to people, though, it's been mixed. And my godmother and cousin over in Sydney has spoken quite openly with me about how incredible it has been for her 13 year olds and her 10 year olds, how they'd stopped asking for social media. We've heard from children and young teenagers at the top of the show, many of whom can acknowledge that there are harms of social media. They've all been taught it at school.

15:03And yet they are aghast at the thought that they won't be able to go on YouTube, that they won't be able to go on Snapchat. they're going to lose their snap streak and all that kind of thing. And I wonder, was it the same in Australia at the start? And do you still hear a lot of thrashing and wailing from children? Yes. I mean, those few months before the ban came in in December, there was definitely a lot of outspoken young people speaking about how they were going to not only lose access to their favourite apps, the media they consume, but also at the exact same time, access to conversate with their friends.

15:38They were afraid that the communication they had with their friends after they went home, which back in the day, I would have used MSN the second I got home. BRB, TTFN and all that sort of stuff. That was one of the biggest kind of fears of them was not being able to communicate with their friendship groups. There are other ways that they can do that since it has come in. Yes, Facebook is blocked, but Messenger isn't. WhatsApp isn't one of the apps that is blocked. So there is still ways for young people to communicate in that way. And I confess I wanted to have you on the show today, not just because you're an expert in vertical video, but also because you were a child internet star back in Ireland.

16:14So if people are slightly confused by your accent, you're what, half Irish, half Aussie? It's all over the place, isn't it? Yeah, grew up in Australia originally, and then moved to Wicklow and Dublin in Ireland, and then moved back to Australia a number of years ago. And tell me about how you made it big online. YouTube had only just begun, so it was in its infancy. And I would have been 16, or just about 16 when I made my first video. So that would have been in 2006. I think it was, actually, I know the date, January 27th, 2006. There you go. I was a really quiet kid. I didn't have a lot of friends in school.

16:46But deep down, I wanted to do some form of creative work. I wanted to be an actor or a host or a presenter or something like that. And YouTube, for me, was a community that I found online that felt private. but I was also a queer kid who didn't really know it yet. So within that too, it was a way for me to meet people that I wasn't meeting in my everyday life. And what kind of videos were you making? I used to do vlogs, which would be kind of heightened character vlogs and then in between have little sketches. So it was very much comedy and very much character based and very much of the time, I can tell you.

17:19We can't wait until he strikes. We have to leave this galaxy. You don't mean yes. and to slipstream. Your channel was the most subscribed channel in Ireland at one point, top 50 in the world. And you started making money off it as well, didn't you? Yeah, so just before I turned 18, they started offering these contracts. So it's actually the first time any social media website had started paying its creators back in 2008, which was a huge deal and it almost felt like a validation for me because, you know, my mum hates me saying it, but she was like, what are you doing? This is weird. And all my friends in school as well said the same thing.

17:56A lot of people were quite nasty about it and they didn't understand it. Almost all of them made fun of me for it. So, yeah, it quickly became very big. I remember one day, I think I got about six million views, which was insane back in 2008 or 2007. It was a crazy experience. Look at you now, working for The Guardian. Talking to you. Dreams can come true. You're on today in focus. Absolutely.

18:31And when you sort of say that you were able to kind of find your tribe online, that's the same justification many teenagers give for why they need social media now, that especially if you're queer, maybe you're trans or you're struggling with something, you're getting bullied, but you can find people who are into the same things. And I just wonder, bearing that in mind, do you support these bans? Maybe I'm a hypocrite, but the internet has completely changed. It is not what it was back then. With everything that you can witness by just opening X, you never know what you're going to see the second you open up that platform if you do still use it.

19:06The pressure to even just be online. The anxiety that can come from posting a story and overwatching it and overanalyzing it and looking at yourself that much. And wondering why you don't get enough likes. Does that mean everybody hates you, you know? Yeah. So I do believe that we need to look forward to regulations and ideas around protecting young people online. I think this model of it maybe isn't the end game. Does that mean I don't think that there are great things for young people to experience thanks to the Internet? No. But I think any move towards regulating these platforms is a really important thing.

19:52so chris some of the children that we spoke to are determined to find a way around the ban here's fabio again and if this ban stays in effect i will probably just find a way to bypass it proxy vpn whatever i'll still probably get through and 13 year old grace i have heard so many of my friends talking about using their parents passports to be able to like id that they were a certain age or using burner phones or fake accounts. So I think this has just caused a mass backfire and now countless people are going to be trying to get in. How easy do you think it will be for kids to get around the ban?

20:29Polling by the Molly Rose Foundation, which is a UK-based think tank set up by Ian Russell, the father of Molly Russell, who killed herself after being bombarded with terrible imagery on Instagram. They did surveys of teenagers in Australia about a few months after the ban was put in place, asking, did you still have access to social media? Did you still have your usual way of life? 61 % of them said, yes, we do. So, you know, in reality, kids are wily. Kids find a way around this. And actually, Keir Starmer was saying that actually himself. He was kind of rolling the ground in his announcement on Monday to say, this thing won't be 100 % successful.

21:11We appreciate that. But something at least is better than nothing. Will it mean that no child ever logs onto social media again? No. But look, this might shock you, but it doesn't shock parents of teenagers. They get around other laws too. But we don't say, oh, look, a teenager managed to get a drink somehow, so let's not bother banning alcohol sales to children. We don't do that, do we? That would be utterly ridiculous. and so australia of course is not the only country to have had a go at tackling this issue which other countries have made moves to do this and what have other countries tried they're mostly congregating around the same idea of blocks and bands effectively um so there are a slew of different countries that are starting to do this one of the challenges that we have is all of them have done it relatively recently with pretty much the exception of china which has a curve you and has a kind of staggered approach to social media access and truthfully china for a bunch of different reasons including the way in which its society operates people like that isn't a good comparator to look at but you've got countries like indonesia like malaysia who have introduced bans uh on generally under 16s although sometimes the ages differ um then you have a bunch of european countries that are kind of rowing in behind ideas of either bans at 15 or 16 so you You have Emmanuel Macron in France, who is really welcoming the UK move yesterday.

22:45He kind of, I think, tweeted something like, welcome to the club, saying, you know, this is a good move. This is very smart. Greece is looking at something similar. There are lots of other countries thinking about this, but all of those are to come in the future. And you've said that it's really unclear how this ban will be enforced in practice. But has the government said what penalties, what punishments there will be for social media companies who allow under 16-year-olds to still use these services? There are a bunch of different regulatory regimes being put up by other countries, including giving fines to different platforms.

23:23But the amounts that we're talking about here are chump change. an individual issue might be tens of millions of dollars of fines but in reality that is that is something that they can earn probably within a day or so at least yeah though i think that brazil is bringing in a law next year that could find social media companies 10 percent of their brazilian revenue it's kind of your your risk versus reward appetite as a government of how much you want to risk potentially going towards a court case that you may or may not win versus trying to keep those platforms in line.

24:04Coming up, is a ban really the best solution?