Starmer considers following Australia with under-16s social media ban as Government says ‘nothing off the table’
https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/starmer-considering-australia-social-media-an-5HjdPk7_2/
by The-Peel
Starmer considers following Australia with under-16s social media ban as Government says ‘nothing off the table’
https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/starmer-considering-australia-social-media-an-5HjdPk7_2/
by The-Peel
36 comments
Another pointless law where enforcement is near impossible
He’s really speedrunning how to lose the next election isn’t he
Would be a good first step to check the harm done by social media.
> The UK Government is now said to be considering copying the move in a bid to protect schoolchildren from the dangers of the internet.
Let’s not call them “schoolchildren”. The overall onus isn’t on schools to protect them; ultimately it’s on their parents.
The only thing that can protect children from the dangers of the internet is their parents. Education, parental controls, vigilance, monitoring, and education.
I say that as a parent, who has a 10-year-old accessing the internet, and a 7-year-old about to be doing so in coming years.
Governments need to stop taking on parental responsibility, and need to start recognising that parental failures are due to the parents. The dangers are known, and for the parents that don’t know how to protect against them, the resources to learn how are readily available for free.
How does it work in Australia?
A chunk of Reddit is already blocked for me, would this mean the rest would be blocked unless I upload proof of age? Which I’m not going to do.
Great stuff, wish we had this sooner before the doom scrolling addictions and garbage entertainment news took its hold on people.
Better late than never. Kudos to australia for going first.
I know people will say “but free speech” and he’s taking away rights…..
But as someone who used to be a massive tech enthusiast…. Social media is a cancer to our children.
What is it with UK governments and the desperation to ban things?
The Tories were the same.
What can they do to combat the masses of damage social media is doing to the gullible of the boomer generation?
Mate you just pushed millions of people towards learning how VPNs work, do you really think the most technically savvy generation won’t work it out in 2 minutes?
They mean banning everyone from social media until they upload ID/photo.
They should just hand the government over to Reform at this point.
This is possibly a double edged sword, ever since the advent of text messaging on flippy phones, teenagers have been communicating voraciously via phones. There is every chance they will find a way around this ban and that every online gaming platform will give them a back door into social media communications. On the other hand it’s probably very true that social media is potentially dangerous for teenagers who are incredibly emotionally vulnerable at this stage of their lives. It’s a very hard problem to resolve. It may be that regulating the more platforms could be more effect but who really knows.
This is a speculative non-story; it just suggests they haven’t explicitly said they won’t do it.
Nowhere in the article is Starmer quoted as saying anything, so why is he in the headline?
The culture secretary was asked about it on Nick Ferrari and all she said was ‘they’ll keep an eye on it’.
She later said this,
‘”They were really concerned that if you introduced a blanket ban, not only would it be very difficult to make that work, it might push young people into other parts of the Internet that are unregulated.”
And a government spokesperson said this,
‘”For that reason, there are no current plans to introduce a blanket ban on smartphones or social media for children.”
Click bait nonsense. Do better people.
A ‘social media ban’ for children is actually making the so-called social media companies enforce their own rules and verify the age of users.
The fact that they use ‘addictive’ formats to feed advertising algorithms is well known. Promotion of divisive and sexual content is deliberate to keep you looking at ads they can bill for.
The only justification for censorship is protection, and children need to be protected…
How about you actually go after companies like Meta to actually do more than the bare minimum?
Not only are the likes of Meta, Google and even reddit are doing the bare minimum, they often either refuse to work with Law Enforcement Agencies or drag their feet, they promote some of most hateful vile people on the planet and do next to nothing to stop CSAM Imagines being uploaded on their services.
It would be more effective to tell these companies that if any CSAM images are found on any of their platforms they have 24 hours to remove them, failure will result in massive fines per image, per day.
I would like to see them argue that they do not have a responsbility to remove CSAM images asap.
Oh before anybody tries to defend them, in 2012 over 85% of all reported CSAM Material to Law Enforcement in the US were on a platform owned by Meta.
For many years now Law Enforcement Agencies around the world create hash identifiers for any CSAM imagines that they encounter, these means they are able to scan millions of files in a few minutes and immediately identify any CSAM images that have been hashed which is in the tens of millions.
There would be nothing stopping Google, Meta, reddit or any other Social Media Platform using a similar system so that any CSAM Material that is uploaded using their services are immediately detected, hidden from view and then , the IP recorded and then the Authorities notified.
This would go a very long way in making Social media Platforms safer.
It just shows that the Government is not interested in Children but Censorship and monitoring everything you do online.
I’m not sure how they will enforce it . But I think it’s a good idea…
Age 18+ would be better,
I agree with the social media ban, but I think YouTube should be exempt. My kid has been learning about video game coding because he wants to go into that when he’s an adult. He will be devastated if he loses access to that learning material.
Regulating how social media is allowed to operate would probably be a better idea; as opposed to allowing these algorythms designed to keep you addicted to platforms, exposing people to shocking content and encouraging bullying
cutting off kids ways of communicating with one another would be kinda messed up
also i guess sucks for you if you’re one of the nerdy teens who struggles to make friends at school but have friends online, or if you’re one of artsy kids who likes sharing your art with people and are building a following on social media, and double sucks for you if you’re already selling commissions as an artist under the age of 16; that’s your future art career destroyed or impaired
labours only answer to anything is banning it; regardless of the harm that does or the risks that come with that
Another day, another unrequested authoritarian move from Starmer. Who the Hell is he taking instructions from? Dangerous man. Totally drunk on power and control.
Get him out.
I wish I had been banned from social media as a teenager. I’m from the generation that had it from like…13 onwards, and it did irreparable damage to my mental health. I hear the same from many of my peers. We all just kind of joke and accept that pretty much every single one of us was groomed and abused online, as well as being subject to horrific Internet content that no child should see.
As someone who’s job involves a huge amount of dealing with the impacts of social media on vulnerable children online this would be an incredible step.
1/4 of children have viewed pornography by age 11
Press Notice: Children see violent pornography by accident, via social media and as young as six – new research from the Children’s Commissioner reveals | Children’s Commissioner for England https://share.google/9GJIRfFPCM0RIgXBW
Combine this with other horrifying statistics, for example that 500,000 children have experienced sexual abuse last year, a lot of which was online through social media.
Child-sexual-abuse-in-2023-24-Trends-in-official-data.pdf https://share.google/V9angRVYpTbFOLzO3
I think it’s a good idea. Social media is immensely harmful to, well, everyone. Adults should be able to make their own decisions. But there’s a case to ban it for kids.
Nice to see Labour sticking to things that were in their manifesto
Better to ban over 16s. Social media is a cancerous and dangerous social manipulation tool being abused for political shift with no controls or checks. Its degrading western democracy at alarming rates.
He does remember giving 16 years olds the vote right? The kids he’s pissing off today will be able to vote against him come the next general election, and given they’re still kids even at 16, that is as good a reason as any for them to vote one way or another.
Banning social media for under 16s is admitting that social media is harmful for everyone.
We use to have something called parental controls when I was a kid…. I guess ISPs stopped providing that feature?
Maybe he could ask them about their handling of their boat people problem whilst he’s at it
Another restriction, another ban, another curtailment of previously availible agency.
This is a serious question – since 1997, has there ever been a relaxation of rules and regulations in this country?
Damn this guy will do anything to keep labour in power. What with the BBC and teachers, the first young people will hear from ” the other side” will be their 16th birthday, sweet 16 indeed.
Old enough to vote (for us), but no social media (you might get ideas)
I remember how easily it was a kid to watch unhinged stuff, terrorist videos, beheadings, torture videos etc.
I imagine all this will do is push kids into seeing more hardcore stuff from websites that don’t follow the laws.
They’d be better off increasing education and teaching children life skills, empathy, sympathy, respect etc. Instead of useless shit like Latin and learning German, Spanish etc (it’s only useful if you’re going to visit Germany or Spain, Welsh would be a better language to learn)
If you teach children why X is bad it’ll have a much better outcome than just trying to hide X.
So many people would be better off if they learnt about tax, DIY, social skills at school rather than really niche stuff that the majority don’t ever use.
Learning French, German, Spanish and Latin has had zero use to be when I moved to Wales. And it had zero use when I visited Japan. I feel like education could be so much better that you wouldn’t need to ban everything.
But not a word about making the SM companies responsible for the content they promote. Wouldn’t want to upset their money men.
The online safety act I disagree with, it’s a futile exercise. But, I do think that kids under 16 shouldn’t be on social media.
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