Teach Secondary Magazine

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“The government will ban access to social media for all children
under the age of 16.” And with those words, Prime Minister Keir Starmer ended a two decade-long experiment in seeing what happens when children and young people are exposed to a barely mediated
torrent of media from across the globe reflecting the totality of
human experience – from its most rarefied highs, down to its most degenerate and obscene lows.

Or did he?

Because it could be argued that removing children’s ability to post, like, share and subscribe is a way of being seen to do something substantive about cyberbullying, Instagram-fuelled anxiety and ideological radicalisation, but without getting bogged down in, y’know, thorny stuff. Like making the case for robust content moderation, enforced by an online media regulator with real teeth. Or levying financial sanctions with genuinely unpleasant consequences for a tech
titan’s bottom line. Or asking deeper, more probing questions about whether the behaviour of adults might have had a part to play in why social media has come to be seen as such a perilous place for young minds.