Why the social media ban is about so much more than social media

"Everyone's really upset mum - loads of them have got their own YouTube channels."

That was my 12-year-old son's summary of how the news about the social media ban for UK under-16s went down in his classroom.

Exactly how a bunch of 12-year olds might have ended up with their own channels in the first place when the minimum age is supposed to be 13 shows just how big a change in culture the government is trying to make.

In Preston, school pupil Isabella went viral when a BBC colleague asked her on-camera what she would do instead with the nine hours of screentime she had racked up over the previous weekend: "stare at the wall," she deadpanned.

The exact logistics of the ban have yet to be set out but it is very possible that its introduction will herald the biggest ever change in the UK in terms of how everyone, children and adults alike, accesses the internet. Millions of us might have to share some official ID which includes our date of birth, in order to access a whole range of platforms from next spring.

The ban has been broadly welcomed by campaigners, including a group of bereaved parents who say their children died as a result of a variety of harms on social media.

But for others, what the government is planning goes beyond getting the nation's kids to spend more time off screens and engaged in alternative pursuits (even if that does include staring at walls) and amounts to a profound reshaping of how it is assumed young people will accumulate fresh knowledge and also how the rest of us will move around online.

There is the potential impact on education. "YouTube is where we all go to learn," says Dr Tom Crawford, aka Tom Rocks Maths, who shares maths skills with his 250,000 subscribers on YouTube, which is included in the ban. "And that includes teenagers."

So, are we really witnessing the profound shift that some claim? And if we are, how will it reshape our relationship with the online world?

"They will find a way around it"

Much of the concerns raised so far about the proposals have been about civil liberties and government overreach. But there are other, more prosaic, unintended consequences to consider too.

"Every young person I have spoken to has told me the same thing: they will find a way around it," says Paddy Crump, campaigns director at Flippgen, a youth-led non-profit group that goes into schools to try and help young people build healthier relationships with the online world.

That is certainly what seems to have happened in Australia, where seven out of 10 children aged under 16 who had a social media account before it introduced its ban in December 2025, still have some access, according to a report by the country's e-safety commission.

Crump argues that the measures offer "false hope dressed up as protection" and will simply shift young people's online behaviour elsewhere: including to smaller digital platforms which fly beneath the radar of regulatory scrutiny.

"There are some pretty dangerous places for children and teens that make Instagram look like Disneyland," notes Ari Lightman, professor of digital media and marketing at Carnegie Mellon University.

Social media as a lifeline?

And critics of the proposals warn of other unintended side-effects. Crump fears the ban could make young people less likely to seek support for online harms if they do encounter them, as well as isolating them from communities and information.

One teenager sent me a message to say that without social media they would not still be here: the friendships they had made online had given them reasons to continue living. Some parents with SEND children say social media and watching videos is their primary way of engaging with the world.

An online e-petition is calling on the government not to ban social media for under 16s "because for many young people social media is how they communicate with their friends. Some people view social media as a lifeline". It has gained more than 100,000 signatories in the past few days.

Home education message boards are also lighting up with parents concerned about how to navigate the ban while teaching their children away from schools.

"I learned to tie a bow tie by watching a tutorial on YouTube," says Crawford. "What if you're an 11-year old that needs to wear a tie to school for the first time? What if you want to know how to apply makeup and there's no-one at home to show you? What if you're worried about your upcoming GCSE exams and want to check how to answer a question on bearings? This is what a ban on YouTube takes away - the ability to learn."

Older generations might retort that they managed to acquire all this knowledge without the help of the internet. But that ignores how fundamentally teenagers have become accustomed to using not just YouTube but also other social media platforms as a research tool. SEO expert Mehwish Malik from Link Builder says the younger end of Gen Z (aged 14-29) use TikTok as a search engine: their preferred gateway to information and to trusted brands.

So how can all this be addressed? The government says this is for the tech companies to figure out. "If YouTube wants to come up with something that's an intermediate option that allows that young person who wants to watch history documentaries to watch them but isn't then getting all of these short reels, that's a different proposition," said education secretary Bridget Phillipson on the BBC's Newscast.

Industry sources argue that technically it's not that simple to set something like this up. "Ask the government!" messaged one when I posed the question about how it might work.

Parents could of course just choose to sit down and watch something with their child using their own accounts if they have the time and willingness: YouTube claims that half of UK users watch its videos on the TV at home, with multiple sign-ins available.

"As I see it, the main issue here is that YouTube isn't social media," says Crawford. "YouTube is the 2026 version of television."

A bottomless wine glass

With the design features that aim to keep people on the platforms for as long as possible also under review for additional measures impacting 16 and 17 year olds, perhaps social media will end up withering on the vine because it just won't be interesting enough for young people to engage with even when they do reach the right age.

"If you are drinking a glass of wine and it magically keeps refilling without you noticing, you will just keep drinking. Your brain only 'wakes up' when you reach the bottom of the glass," says Asa Raskin, who invented the concept of infinite scrolling 20 years ago.

He now works at the Center for Humane Technology, which he co-founded, and accuses the tech companies of "weaponising" his idea.

He says he intended to create "a seamless user experience" before the era of social media, and regrets that his invention has ended up being used "not to help people but to keep them hooked".

The absence of young people could also change the social media experience for everybody else.

MrBeast is arguably the world's most successful YouTuber with half a billion subscribing to his mix of challenges, stunts and charity. He started out at 13 and as a child studied the algorithm. He went on to corner the market in "watch time", created a factory of content and is now a billionaire. Would he have had the same idea years later?

Professor Amy Orben is a psychologist at Cambridge University who has advised the government on screen time for children. She accepts that any ban will be "imperfect" but also agrees the government cannot do nothing; despite the evidence on social media harms itself being complex.

There are of course acute and tragic cases, but broadly, she says the evidence for large populations links social media use to only a small decrease in mental health.

In her opinion, the tech firms could help both regulators and themselves by sharing more about what they know from the billions of young people they see on their platforms day in, day out.

"Social media companies have offered exceptionally little data on their internal research," she says.

A price worth paying?

When it comes to age verification, it is expected that the tech giants will do the checking.

"The methods available to platforms are well established. Identity document scanning with a face match, email-based age checks and facial age estimation are proven to work at scale," says Andy Lulham, Chief Operating Officer at Verifymy.

That is a concern for those who worry about the reach of Big Tech into our lives - and that affects all of us, not just the young people who need to prove their age. Some see this as a major attempt by the authorities to control who can access what on the internet: this troubles privacy and rights campaigners as much as it relieves parents who are worried sick about what their children are being exposed to.

For those in favour, this is a price worth paying to protect children.

For Elon Musk, the controversial owner of X, it has a more sinister undertone: "The real goal is to enable the UK government to track everyone," he posted. It's not the first time the US trillionaire has waded into UK politics and he isn't universally welcomed when he does. Needless to say the government denies this.

Musk is not alone in his concerns: an international campaign called Stop Killing the Internet also launched this week. The group, which includes the Index on Censorship and Big Brother Watch, is concerned that various forms of surveillance, as it considers this to be, limit rights to freedom of expression for children and adults.

Silke Carlo, Director of Big brother watch said: "We want all children to be safe online, but these policies create new safety and privacy risks for young people and entire adult populations alike. Far from reigning in Big Tech in, age-gating policies gift corporations masses more of our personal information whilst letting them off the hook for their design choices".

For Carlo, those risks include the potential for sensitive children's data, such as proof of age and face scans, to be stolen and misused.

And then of course there's the potential for future mission creep.

"'Keep children safe' can end, three statutory instruments later, as a duty to scan every message or verify every face, administered by a regulator the public cannot easily call to account," warns computer scientist Professor Alan Woodward from Surrey University.

"A walled garden is only a refuge if the people inside chose the wall, can see over it, and may leave when they wish."

I suspect my own 12-year-old son and his peers will spend a lot of time looking for potential exits from the walled garden they are about to find themselves in, even if it's supposed to be for their own protection.

If the ban does come into force in 2027 as planned and they can not escape it, today's under 16s are unlikely to spend the following years staring at the wall (I hope). Child-free digital spaces will feel different for adults too: I think we might be on the cusp of a new social media era, one that is less intense. It might leave us all with more time to read books, go outdoors... or use our phones to chat with AI instead.

Additional reporting: Philippa Wain

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