Why Countries Are Pushing Social Media Bans Despite Their Flaws
Proposals for curbing social media use among children have wide support, but critics say they are ineffective.
Proposals for curbing social media use among children have wide support, but critics say they are ineffective.
Meta’s landmark $17 billion settlement in the United States this week added momentum to a swelling global effort to curb children’s social media use. About 40 countries are debating, proposing or implementing limits on access to such platforms for young people.
Under the settlement, Meta agreed to strengthen its age verification tools, expand parental controls and impose other curbs to features that stoke mental health concerns.
The wave of regulatory activity across Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas against social media companies has been driven by worries that their products harm children. Supporters of the curbs have pointed to addictive design features that hook young brains and to the proliferation of harmful content despite existing safeguards.
But the bans come with problems of their own. In Australia, the first country to enforce one, the measures have so far failed to keep children off social media. Critics have also said that the bans limit freedom of expression and create privacy issues around age screening.
Despite these issues, initiatives to limit children’s access to social media have expanded. Here are the points of contention in the push for such restrictions.
Do the bans work?
By the most obvious measure, no. Early evidence indicates that social media bans for children in countries like Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia are ineffective at keeping young people off the platforms. Children have generally been able to maintain access by using technical workarounds like VPNs or fooling age verification systems. Some governments have said that social media companies are not enforcing their bans.
