UK social media ban: an end to brain rot and doomscrolling?

Summary

The Story (The Times)

Episode: UK social media ban: an end to brain rot and doomscrolling?

Date: June 16, 2026

Host: Manveen Rana
Guest: Mark Selman, Technology Correspondent for The Times
Episode Theme: Exploring the UK government’s bold new policy to ban social media access for children under 16—its motivations, expected impact, and reactions from teenagers, parents, researchers, and tech companies.

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Episode Overview

This episode addresses the UK government’s historic announcement to ban social media access for children under 16. Manveen Rana and Times technology correspondent Mark Selman break down the political context around the ban, the real-life teenage experience of social media (especially TikTok), the evidence behind claims of harm, the regulatory challenges, and what this move could mean for the future of childhood, technology, and tech regulation.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Background and Political Context

• Prime Minister’s Announcement (01:16)
  • The episode opens with the Prime Minister declaring:

    "Today is a big moment for our country... the government will ban access to social media for all children under the age of 16."
    — [Mark Selman quoting PM, 01:16]

• Bipartisan Support and Political Pressure
  • The policy is notable for rare agreement between Labour and Conservative MPs.
  • Driven partly by high-profile cases (Molly Russell inquest) and parent demands.

2. Teenagers’ Perspectives: Real-Life Use and Feelings

• Addiction and Emotional Use

  • Teen voices on TikTok’s impact:

    "Obviously angry...addicted... If they were gonna ban anything, it should be TikTok, definitely. It's really addictive."
    — [Teenager, 02:08]

  • TikTok as an emotional crutch:

    “Like, if I'm feeling a bit awkward, you go on TikTok, basically. Or sometimes just don't even go on anything. Just pretend to be on my phone in awkward situations.”
    — [Teenager, 02:28; 16:46]

• Awareness and Acceptance of Harms

  • Teens demonstrate acute self-awareness:

    "It sort of gives you brain rot. And I think this is something that sort of believing that these teenagers don't know what's happening to them or are not aware of what's happening to them. That is not the case... They are totally aware...and not able to change their habits."
    — [Mark Selman, 07:30]

3. New Research: How Teens Use TikTok

• Study Overview (04:35)

  • Conducted by Revealing Reality and children’s charity 5Rights.
  • 21-23 teens (14-16 years) shared their full TikTok digital history for analysis.
  • Used “digital donations” and screen recording to mirror their online experience.

• Key Findings

  • Teens watched up to 700 TikTok videos a day (10,000 a month!).

    "...about 700 videos a day. That's 10,000 videos a month. It’s just this constant stream..."
    — [Mark Selman, 10:42]

  • Usage peaks at night (10pm–4am)
  • Feeds filled with “AI generated meme type videos” with “virtually no content value”.

    "It’s mostly a lot of AI generated meme type videos...an experience that the kids talked about...it sort of gives you brain rot."
    — [Mark Selman, 07:29]

  • Heavy commercial and sexualized content—even bordering on “OnlyFans funnel content”.

4. Harms and Risks: Opportunity Costs and Wellbeing

• Opportunity Cost

  • Time spent on TikTok crowds out sleep, hobbies, family time, social activities.
  • "It’s the opportunity cost of the time...kids were not going outside and doing things because they were on their apps."
    — [Mark Selman referencing Jonathan Haidt, 13:58]
  • Direct teenage voice:

    "Using social media gets in the way of other things... I could have still planned to go somewhere or maybe try to convince my family to go out."
    — [Teenager, 14:41]

• Mental Health Impact

  • Sleep deprivation, anxiety, depression, and even suicidal ideation are mentioned.

    "Anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts. I mean, it's a very, very long list."
    — [Mark Selman, 13:58]

• Content Risks

  • Unregulated, commercial, and sexualized content prevalent.
  • Platforms used as gateways to adult sites (e.g., OnlyFans).

5. Ban Details and Enforcement Challenges

• What is Being Banned? (21:46)

  • “Australia-plus” model: ban is based on platform type (social + algorithmic feed).
  • Likely to include TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Reddit, and X (formerly Twitter).
  • Also bans certain features (e.g., strangers contacting children, livestreaming by under-16s, romantic chatbots for under-18s).

• Enforcement and Age Verification (24:26)

  • Platforms resist robust age checks; currently, 9 out of 10 platforms are not compliant in Australia.
  • Platforms can estimate user age via AI, user data, “signals”.

    “Meta is going through all its users and if it thinks they are a teenager, it puts them into their teen accounts. They have AI systems that know how old you are by what you talk about.”
    — [Mark Selman, 24:26]

• Tech Industry Reactions and Lobbying

  • Platforms dislike piecemeal approach (“level playing field” preferred).
  • Some safety advocates and charities (including Molly Russell’s father, Ian Russell) advocate regulating addictive product features (autoplay, infinite scroll) across all platforms, not outright bans.

6. Debate: Efficacy and Cultural Impact

• Legislation “Leaks”

  • Law will not be watertight: kids will find ways around bans.

    "You will never have a watertight system... They get around other laws too. But we don't say, oh, look, a teenager managed to get a drink somehow, so let's not bother banning alcohol sales to children."
    — [Mark Selman, 28:08]

  • The value lies in the cultural signal—government draws a line for children’s safety.

• Long-Term Vision and the Future of Childhood

  • Not targeting current teens as much as “today’s five and six year olds”.
  • Hopes to break the peer pressure “network effect” that keeps children on social media.
  • Envisions childhood with later, more restricted phone use; next technical concerns: AI chatbots.

    "What this is trying to do is essentially break that network at a national level... the competition, conversation, the language around it is going to be different, but technology will be there. AI is the next frontier..."
    — [Mark Selman, 30:12]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “It sort of gives you brain rot... They are totally aware of what is going on and not able to change their habits.”
  — Mark Selman [07:30]

• “If they were gonna ban anything, it should be TikTok. Definitely. It’s really addictive.”
  — Teenager [08:54]

• “We don't say, oh, look, a teenager managed to get a drink somehow, so let's not bother banning alcohol sales to children. We don't do that, do we? That would be utterly ridiculous.”
  — Mark Selman [28:08]

• “So yeah, you will probably see today's five and six year olds emerging in a world where their phone...is probably not as powerful, or Internet abled, or...slightly more restricted...the competition, conversation, the language around it is going to be different...”
  — Mark Selman [30:12]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• PM’s social media ban announcement: 01:16
• Teenagers’ own views & digital donation study: 04:35-11:54
• How much and at what times teens use TikTok: 10:42, 11:30
• Mental health harms and lost childhood: 13:58-14:58
• Sexualized and commercial content dangers: 15:26
• Emotional crutch use and social avoidance: 16:46
• Policy development, Australia’s role: 19:48-21:33
• What platforms/features are banned: 21:46-24:26
• Platform enforcement, lobbying, and loopholes: 24:26-27:45
• Realism about bans and the cultural shift: 28:08-29:48
• Who this helps and the future vision: 30:12

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Summary Table: Main Episode Takeaways

| Segment | Key Points | Quotes / Timestamps | |--------------------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|-------------------------------| | Announcement & Politics | PM’s bold move, rare bipartisan support, public pressure | [01:16] | | Teen Use and Self-awareness | Teens call TikTok addictive, use as crutch, awareness of “brain rot” | [02:08, 07:30, 16:46] | | Under-the-hood: TikTok Habits | New study: up to 700 videos/day, night use, commercial & sexualized streams, lost time | [10:42, 11:30, 15:26] | | Risks & Mental Health | Sleep, anxiety, “disappearing childhood”, exposure to harmful content | [13:58, 14:41] | | Ban Details & Enforcement | “Australia plus,” feature-level bans, industry resistance, age verification challenge, platforms “know your age” | [21:46-25:32] | | Philosophical Debate & Efficacy | Legislation is imperfect; value is culture-shifting, breaking network/peer pressures, targeting early-years childhood | [28:08, 30:12] |

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Tone, Style, and Engagement

The episode keeps a thoughtful, urgent, and practical tone, driven by both data and the direct voices of teenagers. It’s as much about what kind of future society wants for children as the mechanics of regulation. The inclusion of teenage self-reflection and immediate parental concerns grounds the larger political developments in daily life.

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For Listeners

You’ll come away with:

• First-hand insight into what it’s like to be a teenager glued to TikTok today
• An understanding of what the UK’s ban entails—and why it’s happening now
• Why the issue is so difficult to legislate and enforce
• The real risks and harms (social, psychological, developmental) of pervasive social media use for children
• A glimpse of where tech, childhood, and policy may be heading next

For further exploration, the podcast points to additional coverage and interviews with teens on The Times’ website.

Transcript

[Teenager Participant]

Because you didn't just say, how can I provide these investments? You'd be, how do I holistically provide everything? How do I bring in the legal, the accounting, all this, and do it at a price point no one else is doing it.

[Mark Selman]

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[Manveen Rana]

this episode of the Story is sponsored by PwC.

[Mark Selman]

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[Manveen Rana]

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[Mark Selman]

Discover more at pwc.co.uk.

[Manveen Rana]

from the Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story. I'm Manveen Rana for Keir Starmer. After a bruising series of resignations last week and with a by election in Makerfield which could yet decide his fate in number 10 looming on Thursday, it's hard not to think about your legacy. And on Monday morning, the Prime Minister made a bold new announcement.

[Mark Selman]

Today is a big moment for our country. This is a big step, real change for our children and our future. Because today I can announce that the government will ban access to social media for all children under the age of 16.

[Manveen Rana]

Unusually, this was a policy that even the opposition, certainly the Conservatives, could get behind.

[Teenager Participant]

It's really important to be clear from the outset that this won't be perfect. There are alcohol bans, there are cigarette bans. Young people do get around them. But what this is going to achieve is a cultural shift to say that social media is not safe for young people.

[Manveen Rana]

But what about teenagers themselves? How do they feel about it?

[Teenager Participant]

Obviously angry because obviously addicted to a book. Just gotta get on it. If they were gonna ban anything, it should be TikTok, definitely. It's really addictive.

[Manveen Rana]

How do teens feel about their relationship with their phones and how it's affecting their development?

[Teenager Participant]

Like, if I'm feeling a bit awkward, you go on TikTok, basically. Or sometimes just don't even go on anything. Just pretend to be on my phone in awkward situations, just pretend to scroll.

[Manveen Rana]

Will this ban save a generation of teenagers? Will they just find ways around it? And how will big tech respond? The story today, the social media ban, is this an end to brain rocks and doom scrolling. Mark? Do you have kids? Are they on social media?

[Mark Selman]

Yes and yes.

[Manveen Rana]

Tell me about that.

[Mark Selman]

I have a very personal, a very personal interest in this story, besides being

[Manveen Rana]

a dad to two teenagers, Mark Selman is also technology correspondent for the Times.

[Mark Selman]

Well, I guess the other thing to mention is that I started this job in 2022, and the first, virtually the first story I worked on was the inquest of Molly Russell, who, as many listeners will know, took her own life after looking at toxic content on social media. Her father, Ian Russell, has been instrumental in getting to where we are today, although ironically, he doesn't support it. But going back to my children, yes, they are both on social media. They're teenagers, 15 and 17 and are probably in the middle of all this.

[Manveen Rana]

This is a very big moment for everyone in this country, really. This is the first time we're looking at properly curtailing the powers of big tech, particularly when it comes to children. And parents across the country will be worried about this on a very regular basis. And, Mark, you've actually been talking to researchers who've been looking at how teens use social media. Tell us a bit about that study.

[Mark Selman]

Yeah, it was a really fascinating look at how kids are actually on TikTok. And I think we, we hear so much about kids and social media. And there's the, you know, obviously the media reports on stuff, the media reports on the extreme stuff generally, because that's what makes the news. But actually the ordinary, mundane, general use of TikTok, unless you sit with your child or with a teenager alongside them and look at it, it's actually really hard to know what they're doing because everybody's experience, by definition, on these individual algorithmically fed platforms is completely different. So this research company called Revealing Reality, in conjunction with a children's charity called 5Rights, they recruited about 21, 23 teenagers across social, different social groups and then genders between 14 and 16. And they said, look, will you let us know how you use it? But by giving what's called a digital donation. And most people don't realize this, but your entire Digital history on TikTok is recorded. So everything you look at everything and how long you look at it, when you look at it, whether it's an ad or a video, what type of video, it's there both for the company to know and for someone else if you give it to them. So they got that and they analyzed it. They also did screen recording so we could experience what the kids were experiencing, which is, which is, you know, I encourage everyone to look at that. To sit through a minute of that is a challenge because of the speed and just the sensory intensity of it. And then they interviewed them in depth about their experiences. And they also got them to do real time surveys. Like after they come off TikTok, something would ping up on their screen, say, how do you feel?

[Manveen Rana]

And Mark, were they using TikTok as the model because it's so popular with kids, it seems to be so addictive, or was it because it's able to give you that record of everything they've ever seen?

[Mark Selman]

Well, it's the primary one where kids spend most of their time. I mean, look, Snapchat kids are on that as well. But that is much harder because it's primarily a messaging app. So you don't get access to that. But this is, you can get access to the content.

[Manveen Rana]

Okay, so seat belts on. Just talk us through that sensory explosion. What is it that kids are actually seeing when they're on TikTok?

[Mark Selman]

How would you describe it?

[Teenager Participant]

It is.

[Mark Selman]

So I'll tell you what it's not and what they didn't find. They didn't find that they were looking at what their friends were doing. And obviously that was the original premise of the social network. You're going to connect to your friends and see what they were doing and that wasn't what they were experiencing. And then obviously there wasn't a lot of communication going on. It's not like a messenger service. It's mostly a lot of AI generated meme type videos. And this is in the words of the researchers, that have virtually no content value whatsoever. That's not a pejorative statement on my part, but that's what they found. They just found that it was just something that, and this was an experience that the kids talked about. It sort of gives you brain rot. And I think this is something that sort of believing that these teenagers don't know what's happening to them or are not aware of what's happening to them. That is not the case. And that's what comes out in this research. They are totally aware of what is going on and not able to change their habits.

[Manveen Rana]

So presumably they wouldn't be too uncomfortable with the idea of a ban on some of this.

[Mark Selman]

Yeah, and this is what's amazing is that there was a 14 year old boy, Alfie was very clear that he wanted a ban.

[Teenager Participant]

I think they should only ban for certain things.

[Mark Selman]

Okay, like what?

[Teenager Participant]

TikTok. If they were gonna ban anything, it should be TikTok. Definitely.

[Mark Selman]

Why do you think they should ban TikTok?

[Teenager Participant]

It's like I said, it's really addictive.

[Mark Selman]

And then the researcher asked him, say, why are you, you Know, why do you think you're addicted? And he says because when I don't

[Teenager Participant]

have it I just get annoyed and bored.

[Mark Selman]

Yeah. He says obviously I wouldn't be very happy, I'd be agitated afterwards. But you've got to ban it. And you know, if you don't just ban it, you've got to get rid of Infinite Scroll. If I asked you like if there's anything you could change about the Internet,

[Manveen Rana]

what would it be?

[Teenager Participant]

Make it less addictive?

[Mark Selman]

How do you think that would happen?

[Teenager Participant]

None of this scrolling thing.

[Mark Selman]

I mean this is almost like a very sophisticated sort of analysis. This is what the government is looking at and other governments are looking at a banyan Infinite scroll, you know, the algorithmic feed, the thing that keeps you on it. He brought up the concept of addiction and this is what a lot of the kids do. They use that word addiction obviously with

[Teenager Participant]

it being addictive and that instead of possibly like doing some extra revision for school, I would be like scrolling on TikTok. It's very, it's very addictive. I think, I think we're all guilty of going on TikTok and saying how long we'll be on it for 30 minutes and then we end up being on it and then you end up on it for hours upon hours.

[Manveen Rana]

Mark. I mean just for people who aren't on TikTok, just explain that you talked about the speed, I mean how much content, even when it is brain rotting stuff. How much are they actually consuming on a daily basis?

[Mark Selman]

Well, hundreds and hundreds of videos a day. I mean they said about 700 videos a day. That's 10,000 videos a month. It's obviously not like sitting through Netflix or even YouTube to a certain. Obviously YouTube has shorts but this short form video encourages you to flick through it. I see that. No, I see that. No, see that. Yes, I'll be on that for next. Next, next. And it's just this constant stream of pushing through to the next video.

[Manveen Rana]

Yeah. There's all the scrolling in between scrolling.

[Teenager Participant]

Yeah.

[Manveen Rana]

And there's, I suppose there's the opportunity cost of that. You know, if you're going through hundreds of videos a day, you're spending a lot of time on your screen. Is that something they were very aware of?

[Mark Selman]

They were. The amazing thing is quite how much of it was happening at nighttime between the hours of 10 and 4am this was not a study of what restrictions they had on at home. I don't know what rules are based in their household, but a lot, a lot of these 21 kids were looking at it between 10 and 4am it's

[Manveen Rana]

so interesting to be able to hear from teenagers themselves about their daily experiences of being online and also, you know, their worries about it. The fact that it doesn't sound like a ban would be entirely unwelcome for them. That's obviously a fascinating study, but it's a small sample, as you said, just over 20 teenagers. Is there more scientific evidence to suggest that social media is actually harmful, especially to young people?

[Mark Selman]

Look, it's a heavily disputed area, put it that way. And we get into correlation and causation and the arguments for whether there is evidence for causation rather than correlation. But I actually think we're beyond that now. The government set up a program, a research program. It must have been six or eight months ago, maybe when all this started bubbling up as a long term study to look at the potential impact of screen time social media on the mental health of children. And that was going to go on for years. But they're not waiting for it anymore. No one's waiting to see the peer reviewed paper that nails causation. Parents are clamoring for change based on what they see rather than the document that proves it.

[Manveen Rana]

You know, it is, as you say, highly disputed within the scientific community. I mean, just spell out some of the concerns they've raised.

[Mark Selman]

Yeah, one of the concerns is around sleep. And one of the teenagers interviewed, Sally has, you know, talked about how it's affected her sleep.

[Teenager Participant]

I feel like it has affected sleep definitely. How? Because instead of sleeping, sometimes I've just been like scrolling on TikTok. Well, obviously like the more I scroll, the later it gets.

[Mark Selman]

Anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts. I mean, it's a very, very long list. But I think that the one that has pushed people more than anything else is time. It's the opportunity cost of the time. This is played into the, you know, the arguments that Jonathan Haidt has written about the American social psychologist in his book the Anxious Generation. It was this idea that childhood was disappearing, that kids were not going outside and doing things because they were on their apps. And Sally has also talked about how social media impacts her daily life.

[Teenager Participant]

Using social media gets in the way of other things because even if I'm not doing anything that day or in that moment, I could have still planned to go somewhere or maybe try to convince my family to go out.

[Manveen Rana]

Yeah, I suppose in terms of childhoods disappearing, you know, there's the, as you say, the opportunity cost of being outside and playing and developing in different ways. There's also that Sense that while they're on their phones, while they're on their screens, they're able to see things that you wouldn't normally come across as a child. And the content itself isn't very regulated. Is that one of the things that is almost indisputable?

[Teenager Participant]

Yeah.

[Mark Selman]

I mean, going back to this research, what they found was the content was mostly sort of commercially driven. It was someone trying to sell you something. The other thing obviously that emerged is you get a lot of sexualized content at the edge of the regulations or the platform's rules. So it's a lot of especially female sexualized content. And then you also get professional adult content creators, OnlyFans type content that is not in breach of the rules is highly suggestive, but is there to funnel you from TikTok onto their platform, be it OnlyFans or some other platform. It's what they called OnlyFans funnel content.

[Manveen Rana]

I mean, all of that is really alarming for parents to understand that their kids could be scrolling across this every day. Are the kids themselves aware of the dangers, you know, of the content they're seeing, of how it's affecting their development socially?

[Mark Selman]

Listen, I think it just depends on child to child. You know the interview with the girl, the 15 year old girl in the research, she used it as an emotional crutch sometimes.

[Teenager Participant]

I was on TikTok quite a bit yesterday when I went to my granddad's after Monopoly because there was nothing else for me to do and you were sort of just like doing random things around the house and so I was just scrolling on TikTok. So when you feel awkward, you go on TikTok basically, or sometimes just don't even go on anything. Just pretend to be on my phone in awkward situations. But what would you do if you're pretending to be on your phone? Just pretend to scroll. I've done it before where it's died and I've been like in a social situation and just tending to scroll. Why? Why? Why? I don't really like talking to people.

[Mark Selman]

That was the, the emotional crutch for her or just the, the way that she dealt with an awkward situation and it signaled to other people that she was involved in something and didn't want to communicate.

[Manveen Rana]

Coming up. So what does the government's ban actually cover? We'll go through the detail in just a moment.

[Mark Selman]

This episode of the story is sponsored by PwC.

[Manveen Rana]

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[Mark Selman]

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[Manveen Rana]

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[Teenager Participant]

Because you didn't just say, how can I provide these investments? You'd be how do I holistically provide everything? How do I bring in the legal, the accounting, all this, and do it at a price point? No one else is doing it.

[Mark Selman]

Learn more about how we approach wealth [e-mail] integrated.

[Manveen Rana]

Mark, you've been giving us an insight into how teenagers are actually using social media, particularly TikTok. The sort of stuff, the sort of content that they're seeing, how they're using it as part of their lives. As we've been discussing, the government has decided to do something about it. Tell us how that's come about.

[Mark Selman]

Yeah, I think that it's gone through various different stages, but it started to ramp up over the last six to eight months. There were private members bills that were brought in by members of the Labour Party, which had support from the backbenches that were sort of watered down, that angered, I think, a lot of backbench Labour MPs who then pushed again for a ban and indicated their numbers. So there was the labor pressure from labor pressure from the Conservatives who latched onto this as an issue and pushed very hard for a ban on smartphones in schools, mandatory across the nation, and then for a social media ban. And then you had sort of a parliamentary battle which used various mechanisms to pressure the government into agreeing to do something. They were backed into a corner.

[Manveen Rana]

And did seeing Australia take action, did that make a big difference?

[Mark Selman]

Well, it didn't. It didn't. It was very useful to delay in saying, well, Australia's done it, let's just watch and see what happens. Anti ban people say, look at Australia, they brought it in and the kids are still on social media, which they are. And then the pro ban people are kind of like, well look, it's happened, they've crossed the line. They're the first people to do it. It just needs some refining, some enforcement and we'll get there. So it depends, but I think that a government stepping over the line and actually implementing it is always going to be helpful because you learn, basically.

[Manveen Rana]

Yeah. And in terms of having learnt from Australia's experience, I mean, how exactly is the government going to implement it here? What is actually being banned and how do you begin to enforce it?

[Mark Selman]

Yeah, so they're actually going to be, they call it Australia plus they've set up a sort of a definition of a platform that's going to be banned, which is a mixture of social media, social interaction, plus a sort of algorithmic feed. And that's caught about 10 platforms in Australia, plus a few others that have brought themselves into it. And we seem to be going down that route and we will know more when the regulations are laid down in the coming months.

[Manveen Rana]

And just remind us which platforms in particular have been targeted.

[Mark Selman]

We don't know in this country. But if you, you know, if you look at Australia, you've got all the big ones. You've got TikTok, Instag, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube, Reddit, which did fight against it in Australia, X obviously formerly Twitter. So the big ones you kind of are familiar with, the ones that aren't there in Australia, are the gaming platforms. But what the government wants to do here is ban certain features on all platforms, such as strangers contacting each other. So a stranger cannot contact a child under 16 on a gaming network and you will not be able to live stream yourself if you're under 16 on any platform, even if it's not banned. So those features have to be turned off. And then we move on to chatbots. Certain romantic chatbots are going to be banned for under 18s. And those features on the general chatbots, the chatgpts, if they have a romantic element to it, you can't offer it to an under 18. So that's the sort of general scope of things, things, but it's the implementation of it. The crucial thing is once you've got a platform that is banned, how does that platform know who's over 16 and under 16? And this is where the law in Australia has slightly fallen down is it doesn't have really, really tough requirements on the platforms to do the age checks and they appear to basically be backsliding on that. The conspiracy there was that, you know, all the opponents of the tech firm say they're deliberately trying to kill this law to make sure no one copies it. That is definitely a view that is held within the online safety community in Australia and elsewhere. The studies have shown that 9 out of 10 platforms are not doing the robust aid checks. And there are ways to check. And obviously the other thing to mention is the platforms know exactly how old you are.

[Manveen Rana]

Do they?

[Mark Selman]

Yeah, they do. They sell advertising to you. That's an interesting fact that, you know, underlines all this. I mean, for instance, Meta is going through all its users and if it thinks they are a teenager, it puts them into their teen accounts. They have AI systems that know how old you are by what you talk about. By sometimes someone will wish you happy birthday. So they've got lots of signals you give out from your social media account that tell the platforms how old you are. And they're a commercial platform that is designed to know everything about you, to sell you advertising.

[Manveen Rana]

So this shouldn't be so hard.

[Mark Selman]

No, no, it shouldn't be. And this is what the all the regulators are getting their sticks out actually. Look, you don't have to use one of their systems, you can use a third party systems. And we have ways, they have ways of checking your age from your face, from your mobile number, from credit card details, from your email, even your hands, believe it or not.

[Manveen Rana]

And Mark, it's so interesting how the online safety community, as you say, are alleging that the tech companies are enforcing it badly in Australia in order to make the law go away. How have they responded to the ban here? What are they saying?

[Mark Selman]

I think generally speaking the platforms know that there is a global shift in sentiment. They know how things are changing. It's not just Australia, it's all over. Europe is looking at this. Asia has already brought stuff in, so they have to adjust to that and they are adjusting to it. What they don't like is bans that are like this in the sense that one platform it is in and one platform isn't in. They like what's called a level playing field. That is, why don't you ban the features and functions across all platforms rather than name a platform and just ban that? And this is where we get into the opposition to this ban, even from sections of the online safety community, most notably Ian Russell, who I mentioned at the beginning, and his charity, the nspcc. They are much more in favor of forcing the companies to change their product. That is telling them that this feature is no longer acceptable. Autoplay, Infinite, scroll, no longer acceptable. You have to get rid of it. Changing that for everyone, including everyone and all platforms.

[Manveen Rana]

Wow.

[Mark Selman]

And this is the argument against this blanket ban because they say, well look, if you just ban the platform, you don't actually change the Platform.

[Manveen Rana]

Right. There's no incentive for them to fix these things.

[Mark Selman]

Yeah, if you think it needs fixing, obviously. But yeah, if you think that is a product design fault, then get them to change the design fault. And actually the government is saying it's going to look at the sort of addictive features as a potential, you know, in the next stage when we get a report back in July. So they may look at Infinite scroll and just say, this is banned across all platforms. But I guess if you're banning the platform itself, there is this sort of weird dynamic there.

[Manveen Rana]

Yeah. Mark, one of the other criticisms that we've heard a lot whenever this topic comes up, is just, you know, exactly that thing of how hard it is to enforce that kids will find a way around, they always do. So it becomes a meaningless piece of legislation. Is that a valid argument or do you think we're sort of making the perfect the enemy of the good?

[Mark Selman]

No, I think it's valid in the sense that no legislator wants to come up with a law that is widely evaded, avoided and essentially becomes ridiculed, that that's a disaster. So, yeah, the effectiveness of it is extremely important. What I think everyone acknowledges is you will never have a watertight system. Now, will it mean that no child ever logs onto social media again? No, but look, this might shock you, but it doesn't shock parents of teenagers. They get around other laws too. But we don't say, oh, look, a teenager managed to get a drink somehow, so let's not bother banning alcohol sales to children. We don't do that, do we? That would be utterly ridiculous. And so then you come back to what the Prime Minister talked about as a cultural signal. It's essentially twofold. It's a cultural signal from the government saying, these products are not really safe for your children, they're not right for your children. We are saying this as a cultural line in the sand. And they're also saying to the tech companies themselves, we are the democratically elected government. We will decide what is good for our constituency and this is the law and you have to obey it. And that's quite useful for them in an area where they have traditionally found it very difficult to come up against very well resourced, powerful entities like the tech companies in the past.

[Manveen Rana]

The great ambition from politicians who talk about this, who are desperate for this to happen, is that it'll lead to some kind of cultural shift, even if it isn't watertight. As you were saying, there will be a cultural shift that will affect the whole of society. I mean, Looking down the line five years from now, who do you think this will most help? If it goes well, what is the change? We'll see.

[Mark Selman]

Well, obviously this is not really about my children who are 15, 17 or even, I think maybe even the 13 or 14 year olds. It's more about the sort of four, five, six year olds. So much of this is about networks and peer pressure and it's very, very hard to resist a network when everyone's on it. That was always the difficulty. And then small parent groups started to try and break those networks by saying as a group at a local level, no, we're not going to buy our children a phone until they're ex old. And they were saying that when their kids were seven, they were writing pacts to do it to try and break the network. What this is trying to do is essentially break that network at a national level. And it will probably be effective in the long run because what will happen is that the market will change. Smartphones are starting to change and everything is shifting slowly but in one direction. So yeah, you will probably see today's five and six year olds emerging in a world where their phone, when they're 14 years old is probably not as powerful or Internet abled or, you know, slightly more restricted. They are not taking a device into school, which is already starting to happen. And yeah, the competition, conversation, the language around it is going to be different, but technology will be there. AI is the next frontier and as we restrict social media, AI chatbots are, are going to become the new way that people interact with technology. So there's a whole new set of issues that are coming down the track pretty fast.

[Manveen Rana]

That was the technology correspondent for the Times, Mark Selman. There's more coverage of the social media ban and Mark's piece about that study looking at teenagers and TikTok online at the times.com where you can also watch the interviews with the three of the teenagers who took part in the survey and who you heard from briefly in this episode. Although their names have been changed to protect their identities. The producers today were Michaela Arneson and Harry Bly. The executive producer was Edward Drummond. Sound design and theme composition were by Malicetto. There's more coverage on the social media [e-mail] if you can do leave us a review where wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.

[Teenager Participant]

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[Manveen Rana]

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[Mark Selman]

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[Mark Selman]

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