Why the social media ban is about so much more than social media

Key developments are emerging from the global stage. Why the social media ban is about so much more than social media8 minutes ago Share Save Add as preferred on GoogleZoe KleinmanTechnology and AI editorBBC"Everyone's really upset mum - loads of them have got their own YouTube channels. "That was my 12-year-old son's summary of how the news about the social media ban for UK under-16s went down in his classroom. Exactly how a bunch of 12-year olds might have ended up with their own channels in the first place when the minimum age is supposed to be 13 shows just how big a change in culture the government is trying to make.

In Preston, school pupil Isabella went viral when a colleague asked her on-camera what she would do instead with the nine hours of screentime she had racked up over the previous weekend: "stare at the wall," she deadpanned. The exact logistics of the ban have yet to be set out but it is very possible that its introduction will herald the biggest ever change in the UK in terms of how everyone, children and adults alike, accesses the internet. Millions of us might have to share some official ID which includes our date of birth, in order to access a whole range of platforms from next spring.

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The ban has been broadly welcomed by campaigners, including a group of bereaved parents who say their children died as a result of a variety of harms on social media. EPAThe exact logistics of the social media ban have yet to be set outBut for others, what the government is planning goes beyond getting the nation's kids to spend more time off screens and engaged in alternative pursuits (even if that does include staring at walls) and amounts to a profound reshaping of how it is assumed young people will accumulate fresh knowledge and also how the rest of us will move around online. There is the potential impact on education.

"YouTube is where we all go to learn," says Dr Tom Crawford, aka Tom Rocks Maths, who shares maths skills with his 250,000 subscribers on YouTube, which is included in the ban. "And that includes teenagers. "So, are we really witnessing the profound shift that some claim?

And if we are, how will it reshape our relationship with the online world? "They will find a way around it"Much of the concerns raised so far about the proposals have been about civil liberties and government overreach. But there are other, more prosaic, unintended consequences to consider too.

"Every young person I have spoken to has told me the same thing: they will find a way around it," says Paddy Crump, campaigns director at Flippgen, a youth-led non-profit group that goes into schools to try and help young people build healthier relationships with the online world. That is certainly what seems to have happened in Australia, where seven out of 10 children aged under 16 who had a social media account before it introduced its ban in December 2025, still have some access, according to a report by the country's e-safety commission.

The development has drawn wide international attention, with diplomatic circles watching closely.