Social media is toxic. At least, that’s the headline you’d read if you only glanced at the headlines. It harms mental health. It endangers kids. One study found that a Mexican teenage girl saw references to suicide on her feed after just forty minutes of scrolling. Forty minutes. That’s it.
The algorithm didn’t glitch. It worked exactly as intended. Infinite scroll. Instant gratification. Designed to hook you. It’s as addictive as a pack of cigarettes. Or so everyone claims.
This fear has sparked a global rush to ban children from the internet. Australia was the first, banning users under 16 last year. The UAE locked kids under 15 off TikTok, Instagram, and X in June. The UK is planning a midnight curfew for 16- and 17-olds, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer aiming for a total under-16 ban before Christmas (even though he just resigned, the legislation seems set to proceed). France has passed a bill to ban under-15s, waiting only on President Macron’s signature.
Sounds like a solution, right?
Here is the problem: the very organizations fighting for kids’ rights are against these bans. They aren’t cheering. They’re warning that cutting off access treats the symptoms while ignoring the disease. In some cases, it creates new dangers.
Look at Australia. Six months after their ban, seven out of ten parents reported their kids still had accounts. Seven out of ten. Of course they do. Adolescence is rebellion. It’s also natural to resist exclusion from the spaces where your social life exists. If your friends are online, you’re going online.
Comparing social media to cigarettes is lazy. It’s also wrong. Yes, it’s addictive. But it’s not just a vice.
For Gen Z, especially those who came of age during the pandemic, these platforms are infrastructure. They are libraries. They are town squares. When a textbook doesn’t have the answer, who do you ask? Reddit. When a teacher is stuck, who helps? A YouTube tutorial. These are spaces for learning, for information that public institutions often fail to provide.
More importantly, they are lifelines.
For LGBTQ+ youth, people of color, and disabled teenagers, the internet offers a freedom that offline life often denies. It is a place to explore identity. To find role models. To realize you aren’t the only one who feels like an outsider. To take away a ban without providing an alternative isn’t safety. It’s isolation.
Social media is more like a bicycle than a cigarettes. We build bike lanes and teach traffic rules. We don’t ban riding.
If we ban access, what’s the next step? Age verification. Collecting IDs. Passports. Driver’s licenses. You want to put minors’ sensitive data into the hands of tech giants? Go ahead. That data will get hacked. It is not a hypothetical risk. Discord faced a breach in 2025 involving over 70,000 ID documents. Now imagine that scale multiplied by thousands.
The answer isn’t exclusion. It’s regulation. It’s design.
Angie Contreras, an online child protection specialist, puts it plainly: digital life isn’t separate from real life. It’s an extension of it. So, treat it like the real world. We don’t ban bicycles. We know accidents happen. But we build bike lanes. We enforce traffic laws. We teach kids to wear helmets. We demand safety standards for the manufacturer.
Why can’t we do the same online?
First, involve the users. Lorena Villavicencio from Mexico’s National System for Child Protection says the key isn’t controls—it’s built-in protection. Design the platforms to be safe for minors from day one. If an app is addictive by design, that’s a bug in the product, not a flaw in the user.
Second, hold platforms accountable. Brazil is already pushing for this: better parental controls, less infinite scrolling, transparent algorithms, and local staff to answer to laws. Tech companies can’t operate in a vacuum.
Third, teach digital literacy. Schools need to update their curricula. Not just “don’t talk to strangers,” but how algorithms manipulate attention. How to spot misinformation. How to handle cyberbullying.
Parents need tools, too. Initiatives like the VigIA chatbot provide guidance for navigating these complex waters. But let’s be clear: children are not passive victims. They are rights-holders. They are navigating a complex landscape. They need support, not a wall.
The goal isn’t to ban innovation or cut off vulnerable groups. It’s to understand the risk and manage it with proportionate measures.
If we ban social media, we don’t solve the mental health crisis. We just push it deeper underground, into encrypted chats and unregulated apps, with less visibility and no support.
Starmer’s ban might pass. France’s law might stand. But will it work?
The data from Australia says no. The kids are still there. The algorithms are still there. The risks remain.
Perhaps the real question isn’t how to keep kids off the internet. It’s how to make the internet safe enough for them to stay on. Because they aren’t going away. And neither are we.
What happens when the next platform emerges, one even harder to ban? Do we ban that too? Where does it end?
We need policies based on evidence, not knee-jerk fear. We need parents, schools, and governments working together. We need designers who care about harm reduction.
The current path leads to a standoff. A digital arms race that loses to no one but the kids.
Is there another way? Yes. It requires admitting that the problem isn’t the tool. It’s how we built the room.
