Let's ban social media for adults
Several countries have now banned (or rather, attempted to ban) social media use for children. The UK seems next in line to follow suit.
But the thing is, children get social media. They've grown up with it, it's like second nature. Adults, on the other hand, are less good at it. Look at the generally unhinged nature of your local Facebook group and you'll see that I'm right. Regularly we see moral panic in the press because adults have completely misunderstood something that kids get up to online, from the Momo Challenge to Six/Seven. Kids have always got up to seemingly nonsensical behaviour, they've just traditionally done it in playgrounds and school, rather than in front of their parents. The surveillance-based nature of most social networks has merely brought this behaviour to adults' attention, it didn't cause it.
OK, there's bad stuff online, I don't deny it. But the fact is that there's always been bad stuff online. As someone who grew up while the web was in its infancy, I know how it is. You just have to learn to ignore the crap and use the power of the web for good, it's actually quite easy. If, like the current generation of parents, you only started using the web when social media appeared, then of course you're going to be shocked when you see the toxic crap that makes up half the internet. But you can't get rid of it, any more than you can get rid of it from any other facet of life in western society, so don't give yourself a heart attack worrying about it, just teach your kids how to spot bad stuff, and trust them to leave it alone. Expecting the government to do something is just admitting you're a bad parent, frankly.
Also, as I alluded to in the first sentence of this article, don't forget that kids are smarter than you. You can try to ban them from doing stuff, but that just makes them want it more. I know how to get into blocked websites, and I'm sure most kids do too. Literally everyone that I know of my own age is more tech-savvy than their parents, and just the other day I felt very proud to be technologically outsmarted by my nine-year-old niece. If she hasn't used TOR by the time she's in secondary school, I'll have failed in my duty as an uncle.
So my proposal is this: let's just ban everyone over 30 from using social media. Every year, raise this age by a year, until we have a whole generation of adults who are 100% confident using it, because they've done so their whole lives. In the meantime, less bumping into people who just decided to stop in the street because they got a Whatsapp notification, fewer people crossing the road without looking because they're checking their Instagram, and fewer morons in the pub distributing unsolicited information that they incorrectly believe is true because someone on Facebook said so.
