A ban on social media for under-16s is not the \u201cright approach\u201d and could push children towards more dangerous and unsupervised corners of the internet, Google\u2019s UK boss has warned.<\/p>\n
Kate Alessi, managing director and vice-president of Google UK and Ireland, told the Press Association the tech giant \u2013 which owns YouTube \u2013 is not supportive of \u201cblanket bans\u201d as the Government faces mounting calls to stop children having access to social media.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer signalled at the weekend he was prepared to take action to curb features that keep young people addicted to social media, with the Government currently consulting on an outright ban for under-16s.<\/p>\n
A landmark court case in the US last week saw Facebook owner Meta and Google found liable for a woman\u2019s childhood social media addiction through deliberately designing addictive products, and ordered to pay damages of six million US dollars (\u00a34.6 million) between them.<\/p>\n
Ms Alessi said Google does not agree with the verdict and plans to appeal.<\/p>\n
She said a social media ban is not the answer to children\u2019s online wellbeing and cautioned if countries such as the UK followed the lead of Australia, which introduced a world-first social media ban for under-16s in December, it could have unintended consequences.<\/p>\n
Ms Alessi told PA: \u201cWe don\u2019t believe that\u2019s the right approach.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe blanket bans take choices away from parents and push kids out of supervised spaces.\u201d<\/p>\n
But she said it was important that \u201cappropriate guardrails\u201d are in place, with YouTube recently introducing features to help prevent addictive behaviours in children and teenagers, such as timers for its Shorts format, as well as customised \u201cBedtime\u201d and \u201cTake a break\u201d functions.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to make sure our products are built to be as safe as possible,\u201d Ms Alessi said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll work with Government and continue to partner with them as they work through this,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
The comments come as Google announced its latest community programme to boost artificial intelligence (AI) knowledge and skills to help Britons progress professionally.<\/p>\n
It is launching pop-up hubs across the UK to train people on how to get the best out of AI, including \u201cquick win\u201d demos on areas such as how to automate admin tasks and use agentic tools to carry out tasks and research, as well as guides on building a social media presence.<\/p>\n
The pop-up hubs \u2013 called Squeeze the Juice bars \u2013 will be based in Leeds, Liverpool and Birmingham and the Government\u2019s so-called AI Growth Zones in Oxfordshire, the North East, Wales and Lanarkshire.<\/p>\n
The firm is also launching a tour of university campuses nationwide, while it has earmarked nearly \u00a32 million in funding through its Google.org charitable arm to help fund AI initiatives run by social enterprise group Inco, children\u2019s charity Chance and the Good Things Foundation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A ban on social media for under-16s is not the \u201cright approach\u201d and could push children towards more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1543,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[138,1144,142,5,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-1542","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"tag-google","9":"tag-kate-alessi","10":"tag-social-media","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}