The total ban\u2019s failure creates an \u201cemergency,\u201d a top UK official trumpets. \u201cSo what will protect kids online?\u201d a liberal-media headline wails.<\/h6>\n
The United Kingdom\u2019s drastic\u00a0Online Safety Act<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 which took effect in 2023 \u2013 already requires online platforms \u201cto use highly effective age assurance to prevent children from accessing pornography, or content which encourages self-harm, suicide or eating disorder content\u201d and \u201cother harmful and age-inappropriate content such as bullying, hateful content and content which encourages dangerous stunts or ingesting dangerous substances.\u201d<\/p>\n Its backers promised the OSA would \u201cprotect children\u201d from these enumerated\u00a0bad<\/em>\u00a0things on the internet. Now, those same backers clarion the OSA has failed abysmally (as its\u00a0critics<\/a>\u00a0predicted it would): teens are accessing\u00a0more pornography today<\/a>\u00a0than before.<\/p>\n So, hell, just ban under-16s from\u00a0all<\/em>\u00a0social media, good and bad. If something doesn\u2019t work, do more of it.<\/p>\n The \u201cmore of it\u201d is a total ban on under-16s accessing social media. It\u00a0failed in the House of Commons<\/a>\u00a0307-173 (107 abstentions), with Labour MPs awaiting more \u201cstudy.\u201d<\/p>\n OMG. You\u2019d think the Black Plague had erupted in Soho.<\/p>\n The shadow Conservative education secretary declared the ban\u2019s temporary failure creates a dire \u201cemergency<\/a>\u201d. \u201cNo more guidance, no more consultations. Legislate, do something about it,\u201d she said. An expert called for \u201curgent protection.\u201d Labour supporters declared \u201cparents are\u2026locked in a daily battle that they simply cannot win alone.\u201d \u201cEver-escalating risk and bad behaviour\u2026 is infiltrating our, and our children\u2019s, phones,\u201d another, presented as a skeptic, agreed.<\/p>\n The liberal\u00a0Huff Post UK<\/a>\u00a0bewailed the ban\u2019s failure, not even feigning objectivity: \u201cWe all know the myriad arguments for banning social media (addictive design; disruption to sleep, attention and mental health; exposure to harmful or distressing content; and opening kids up to bullying or abuse),\u201d the article read. So, given the ban\u2019s failure, \u201cWhat will protect kids online?\u201d<\/p>\n Are these people losing their minds, or am I?<\/strong><\/p>\n Viewing the panicked moral frenzy over teens and social media afflicting much of world, I am at total, baffled loss. Am I missing some huge point the rampant panickers made somewhere I didn\u2019t see?<\/p>\n Social media is not even remotely dangerous for young people. Get a grip and remember: \u201csocial media\u201d consists of a\u00a0screen<\/em>.<\/p>\n However, the offline world\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0provably dangerous, especially for young people victimized by adult abusers in\u00a0physical, face-to-face situations<\/em>.<\/p>\n The dangers presented by screens are nothing compared to what real life presents children and teens. This fact is amply proven by Big Law attorneys who have severe problems finding\u00a0real-life plaintiffs<\/em>\u00a0even after\u00a0ubiquitous pitches<\/a>\u00a0like: \u201cWas Your Child or Teenager Harmed Due to Social Media?\u00a0You<\/strong>\u00a0May Be\u00a0Entitled to Money<\/strong>!\u201d).<\/p>\n The\u00a0attorneys general lawsuits<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Meta trial<\/a>\u00a0in the US show graphically that teens kidnaped, raped, abused, drug-addicted, and mentally harmed by social media are vanishingly rare to begin with. In fact, the poster \u201cvictim\u201d of \u201csocial media addiction\u201d presented by a well-resourced law firm was so demonstrably traumatized by years of severe\u00a0parental violent and emotional abuses\u00a0<\/em>that even her attorneys admitted social media contributed at most a \u201csmall bit\u201d to her childhood tragedy. And this was the\u00a0best case<\/em>\u00a0skilled lawyers could find to bring to the witness stand.<\/p>\n Growing research and cases are demolishing a decade of histrionics (\u201cSmartphones are destroying a generation!\u201d \u201cSocial media is \u201crewiring childhood!\u201d Teens\u2019 going online an \u201cemergency\u201d demanding \u201curgent\u2019 banishment! on and on). Big Law firms enticed by big-money litigation are proving unable to find demonstrable victims among the hundreds of millions of children and youth using social media hours daily.<\/p>\n How can panickers keep ignoring real dangers to young people?<\/strong><\/p>\n Few realize how dramatically safer the world has become for teenagers over the last two decades. You don\u2019t hear about it because the press and authorities operate under rigid rules that forbid honest reporting on teen issues unless\/until it would benefit a major interest. Otherwise, teens must always be depicted as bad and getting worse.<\/p>\n The U.S. Centers for Disease Control numbers below show the amazing improvements in teen safety during the internet era.<\/p>\n Table 1. US teen problems as a percent of all Americans\u2019 problems<\/strong><\/p>\n Even amid an increase of nearly 6 million in the US population age 10-19 from 1995 to 2024, the proportion of teen involvements (proportion is used to factor out general safety changes over the period) in major risks plummeted dramatically, both absolutely and compared to adults.<\/p>\n From 1995 to 2024, US teenagers\u2019 violent deaths fell by 4,444 per year, and criminal arrests plunged by nearly 2.8 million per year, both down an astounding 62% relative to adult trends. (I know that sounds incredible; check the figures yourselves).<\/p>\n For accidents, homicides, gun deaths, all violent deaths, and crime, per-capita rates of these problems among teens also fell dramatically or rose much less rapidly than adult rates for suicides and drug overdose.<\/p>\n Correlation, of course, does not equal causation. Whether being online more caused or simply contributed to varying degrees for the vast improvements in teenagers\u2019 safety and law-abiding behaviors compared to adults\u2019 (rigid self-imposed rules prohibit such comparisons in press and authorities\u2019 forums) is a good subject for further analysis.<\/p>\n But the bottom line is that teenage behavior and safety improved dramatically as social media use skyrocketed. We can calculate the increased danger simply from transferring the hours spent online to hours spent in the \u201creal world.\u201d<\/p>\n Suppose the ban-teens-from-social-media lobby got its way completely\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2026 and all persons under age 16 (and later, 18, then 21; these lobbies are not going to stop) were forced away from screens to spend the same average 3-4 hours a day with their families, in sports, at church, in parks, at malls, whatever scenario of idyllic \u201cscreen-free childhood\u201d advocates dream of.<\/p>\n Cold statistics predict that forcing tens of millions of US teenagers to transfer the hours they spend online to spending those same hours with their families and outside amid people would result in many thousands\u2019 more children and teens killed in homicides, accidents, by guns, and in violent crimes. Hundreds of thousands to millions more would be abused, injured, sexually assaulted, and traumatized every year. Centers for Disease Control surveys further predict more suicides by teens, since girls in particular who use social media many hours a day are\u00a0less likely to harm themselves and attempt suicide<\/a>\u00a0than girls who don\u2019t go online.<\/p>\n One could shrug, well duh \u2013 sitting in front of a screen is going to be much less risky than being outside on the streets and in the wilds. But that is exactly my point about what is beyond clinically insane about today\u2019s debates in Parliament, Congress, and media and official forums: august leaders seriously insist teens are so perilously endangered online that banishing them from social media is an \u201curgent\u201d priority.<\/p>\n Can small screens present some terrible things? Of course.<\/strong><\/p>\n Four in 10 teens encounter \u201cexplicit content,\u201d whatever that means, on smartphones, the UK Conservative shadow education secretary warns (really? that few?).<\/p>\n Will the secretary tell us what kind of \u201cexplicit content\u201d hundreds of thousands of teenagers encounter from violent, abusive\u00a0Church of England<\/a>,\u00a0Catholic Church<\/a>, youth organization, police, school, other personnel, and \u2013 especially \u2013 family members? What bans does she propose to combat those real \u201cemergencies\u201d? No church before age 18? No sports? No school? No going home?<\/p>\n \u201cDomestic abuse, stalking and sexual assault affected 5.1 million victims in the year ending March 2025,\u201d including over 70,000 rapes by men overwhelmingly victimizing girls and women, the UK\u2019s latest\u00a0Home Office report<\/a>\u00a0declares.<\/p>\n The UK Office of National Statistics report that 45% of female and 60% of male\u00a0victims of sexual offenses<\/a>\u00a0are under age 20 has won frantic attention by demagogues proclaiming that youths must be abusing each other. But, weirdly, the ONS\u2019s companion report that persons under age 20 comprise just 18% of\u00a0sexual-offense perpetrators<\/a>\u00a0(down<\/em>\u00a0slightly from 5 years ago) is never mentioned.<\/p>\n Instead, officials led by PM Starmer incessantly hype Netflix\u2019s fictional \u201cAdolescence<\/a>\u201d series as some kind of proof that teenage misogynists \u201cradicalised\u201d by social media are wantonly stabbing girls. This is the pit into which civic discourse has sunk.<\/p>\n The lost argument for balance<\/strong><\/p>\n All this said, I strongly support more children, teens, and adults (like myself) spending more time outdoors and less time online. That I am here in front of a screen instead of in the beautiful California Sierra outside my window calls my priorities into deep question.<\/p>\n The safety of the buffered social media world along with its enhanced information, expression, and contacts offer large benefits of one kind. The vitality \u2013 and sometimes risk \u2013 of offline, real-world life offer other kinds of crucial benefits.<\/p>\n \u201cOnline and offline belonging are deeply interconnected rather than competing forces,\u201d the\u00a0first study<\/a>\u00a0to ask teens to characterize their larger lives concluded. \u201cThe concept of the \u2018hybrid reality\u2019\u201d in which the \u201coffline world \u2026is woven dynamically and interactively with online contexts in a single holistic ecosystem\u201d is\u00a0the true description<\/a>\u00a0of adolescents\u2019 experiences, another study found. What a refreshing contrast to the narrow zero-sum primitivism of official\/media panic.<\/p>\n Big Tech \u2013 Meta, Google, X, Apple, Anthropic, etc. \u2013\u00a0eagerly supports bans<\/a>\u00a0and restrictions on teens\u2019 internet use. Why? Because \u201cage verification\u201d identity requirements greatly enhance media giants\u2019 and governments\u2019 profitable information gathering on users (especially children), their hegemonic crushing of smaller platforms, and their censorship of political content they don\u2019t like.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!LwyO!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8cda8ea5-4b08-4161-b099-8a7ae49c602f_436x220.png)
<\/picture>\nSources:\u00a0CDC 1999-2024<\/a>,\u00a01968-1998<\/a>;\u00a0FBI 2026<\/a>.<\/h5>\n
– In 1995, virtually no teenagers used social media and none had smartphones. Back then, by most key measures, teens were a high-risk population.<\/h4>\n
– In 2024, over 90% of teens accessed social media and smartphones. Now, by every key measure, teens are a low-risk population.<\/h4>\n