Should we ban social media for under-16s?

Australia has adopted a world-first ban on social media for under-16s, placing the burden on platforms to prevent underage account creation and imposing significant fines for failures. And the UK may be moving in the same direction. 

On 19 January, the government announced a consultation on children’s relationship with mobile phones and social media, including the possibility of restricting access below a certain age, strengthening expectations that schools should be ​“phone-free by default”, and considering action against addictive features such as streaks and infinite scrolling.

Parents increasingly feel they are fighting an uphill battle: trying to raise children for the real world while being continually undermined by digital systems engineered to compete for their attention, identity and time. It is no longer wise to assume children are safe simply because they are at home in their bedrooms online. Three fronts make the case for serious action: mental health, safeguarding and identity formation.

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Mental health

In The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt argues that childhood has shifted from being play-based to phone-based, and that this shift has coincided with sharp rises in adolescent anxiety, depression and self-harm. Correlation is not causation, and other factors matter. But given how pervasive social media is in teen life (93% of UK teens regularly use social media), it is difficult to treat it as peripheral.

UK data shows a stark and sustained deterioration in children’s mental health. Between 2017 and 2020, rates of probable mental disorder in children aged 5 – 16 rose from 1 in 9 (10.8%) to 1 in 6 (16.0%). By 2023, around one in five children and young people aged 8 – 25 experienced a mental health difficulty. At the same time, there has been a decrease in teens’ face-to-face social time, increased reports of insufficient sleep patterns and fewer reports of close real-world friendships. This is not a marginal fluctuation; it is a generation-level deterioration in wellbeing.

Yet it should not take extensive research to show that we are deeply affected by the content we consume and the company we keep. Paul warns that ​“bad company corrupts good character” (1 Corinthians 15:33). We should not assume that this is any different online.

Safeguarding

For too long, children’s safety has come second to the growth and profits of major platforms. Police data illustrates the scale of what has been tolerated: since 2017/18, there have been nearly 34,000 recorded online grooming crimes, and the offence of sexual communication with a child has risen by 82% since it was introduced. These crimes are not confined to fringe corners of the internet. Meta-owned platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp account for almost half of recorded grooming cases and around a third of child sexual abuse image cases.

In 2017, a 14-year-old girl, Molly Russell, took her own life as a result of consuming content glorifying self-harm across multiple social media sites, including Instagram. Tragically, Molly is not alone. A 2022 study revealed that 24% of suicides among children are linked to online experience. This is why the debate cannot be reduced simply to parental responsibility. Families matter enormously, but there has also been a systemic failure to prioritise child protection, with safeguards introduced late, weakly enforced and too often only after significant harm has already occurred. Where platforms have failed to protect children, restricting children’s access is at least a plausible public-protection measure.

Identity formation

The impact of this harmful online culture is clearly visible offline. Guardian investigations have found that social media algorithms quickly direct new teenage users toward harmful content, with fake accounts showing a rapid increase in damaging material after initial engagement with standard topics. 

Scripture teaches that humans are image-bearers: relational beings made for communion with God and with one another (Genesis 1:26 – 27, 2:18). Relationship is not a feature we can replace without cost; it is foundational to our everyday lives. Social media can aid connection, but it cannot replace it.

The danger, especially for children, is not merely distraction but formation: learning to relate to others in ways that are more hollow than the relationships for which we were made. This cannot help but bleed into everyday life. A government-commissioned survey found that harassment has become normalised in schools, with 71% of 16 – 18-year-olds reporting that they regularly hear sexual insults directed at girls.

Adolescence is a crucial time for identity formation. When algorithms elevate sexualised, cruel or extreme content because it keeps users engaged, they are not neutral. They teach it.

Criticism of a ban 

Critics of an under-16 ban point to obvious workarounds: false age declaration, borrowing an older sibling’s account, burner profiles, VPNs and migration to smaller, less regulated services. Those concerns are real. But focusing on loopholes can make the perfect the enemy of the good. Law also sets norms: it signals what we judge acceptable for children, and it shifts responsibility upwards – from children and parents to the firms best placed to reduce harm. 

No replacement for a relationship

A pragmatic UK approach would pair any age threshold with privacy-preserving age assurance, tighter rules on data processing and targeting for teenagers, and meaningful restrictions on addictive product design. Even if some children evade the rules, fewer will be drawn into high-risk spaces, and platforms will no longer be able to treat under-16s as a default market. 

This is not an overnight process. We should recognise that it may be a source of great frustration for teenagers to have digital lives taken from them. And a surprising number will also be quietly relieved. Either way, creating real-world connections takes time and will not be aided by digital overreliance.  

When digital interaction substitutes for embodied community, it trains us to prefer convenient, controllable, low-risk connection over the slow, demanding work of love. As Paul puts it in his letter to the Hebrews, we should ​“consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing” (Hebrews 10:24 – 25). The government’s consultation is an opportunity to reset expectations so that technology serves childhood rather than consuming it.