Growing Calls to Ban Social Media for Children
Calls for the social media ban in the UK for children are growing louder, driven by fear, frustration and a genuine desire to protect. I understand that instinct. When we see headlines about harm, exploitation and distress, it can feel overwhelming. The idea of removing social media altogether can seem like the simplest and safest solution. But there’s a worry that this conversation is rooted in a false sense of control, an attempt to shield children from a digital world that is already woven into their everyday lives, rather than helping them understand and navigate it.
Childhood in a Digital World That Cannot Be Removed
For today’s children, the digital world isn’t an optional add-on to childhood; it is part of how they socialise, learn, play, and make sense of the world around them. Their online lives don’t sit neatly apart from their offline ones. Attempts to remove social media risk misunderstanding children’s lived reality, framing childhood as something that can be reversed to a simpler past rather than supported as it is now. The question, then, isn’t how we recreate a version of childhood we remember, but how we respond responsibly to the one children are actually living.
When Platforms Are Removed, Risk Does Not Disappear
Removing one set of platforms can give a false sense of security. We have spent so long directing society’s concerns at a handful of tech companies that, when restrictions are introduced, it can feel as though the problem has been solved. But children do not stop being digital because TikTok or Instagram is restricted. The behaviour doesn’t disappear, it moves.
Children continue to game, message, watch, and socialise in online spaces that are often less visible and less well understood. Grooming, social pressure and endless scrolling don’t vanish when a platform does. They reappear in group chats, private servers, gaming environments and recommendation-driven video spaces that remain entirely accessible. Treating social media as the sole source of danger risks overlooking the wider digital ecosystems children already inhabit, and some of these unintended consequences are already visible.
What We Can Learn From Emerging Restrictions Elsewhere
Through conversations with young people, including those living under proposed or emerging restrictions in Australia, a pattern begins to emerge. Offboarding has been poor. Young people who relied on online spaces for connection, communication and community were suddenly cut off, often without alternatives. Suggestions to go outside or join a sport overlook very real barriers, financial costs, accessibility issues and the reality that not all children are socially confident or safe in offline spaces. For some young people, particularly those with anxiety or additional needs, these online communities were not a replacement for life, but a lifeline within it.
Where Do Children Go When Online Communities Are Removed?
There is also a newer question that the social media bans have barely begun to grapple with, one I have pondered on for a while. Where will children turn when online communities are removed? For some young people, particularly those who are lonely, isolated, anxious, or lacking support at home, online spaces have been where they have found connection and belonging. Removing those spaces does not remove the underlying need. In a digital landscape now shaped by generative AI, there is a real risk that some children will seek companionship, validation or understanding from systems designed to simulate relationships rather than replace them. If we are concerned about children forming unhealthy attachments online, we cannot ignore how abruptly the removal of human communities may push them toward quieter, less regulated alternatives.
Statutory Education Is the Missing Safeguard
If the risks children face online are serious enough to prompt governments to consider banning social media, then they should be serious enough to demand something else too, mandatory education for online safety, digital well-being and understanding of technology and not just as a small add-on.
At present, digital wellbeing and understanding in schools is often treated as a nice-to-have. It is an afterthought, squeezed in where time allows. In reality, it is foundational. In Scotland, for example, primary children receive, on average, around ten hours of digital well-being and understanding education per year. Ten hours.
In a world where digital systems shape relationships, identity, information, and risk, that is not protection. It is neglect.
Why Bans Without Education Become Symbolic
We are willing to lobby governments to confront technology companies, and we should. But we must also be willing to ask our governments why children’s understanding of the digital world is not non-negotiable in every school.
Online safety, digital-wellbeing and understanding technology should be taught regularly, progressively, and with the same seriousness as other core subjects. Children cannot be expected to navigate a digital world that they are never taught to understand.
Without this foundation, proposals to ban social media risk becoming symbolic solutions to a structural problem.
Meeting children where they are
Removing one set of platforms does not remove risk; it simply changes where that risk appears. Children do not stop being digital because an app is restricted, nor do their needs for connection, identity, and belonging disappear. When policy focuses on erasing visible platforms, rather than understanding the environments children already inhabit, it risks mistaking action for protection. If we are serious about children’s safety, then our response cannot be to look away from the digital world they live in, but to meet them there with education, support, and the willingness to engage with complexity rather than deny it.
