When I wrote recently in The Conversation about proposals to ban teenagers from social media, I did not anticipate the scale or seriousness of the response. The article has since been cited in a House of Commons Research Briefing, and I’ve received thoughtful engagement from people across the political spectrum.
What has struck me most is not simply the strength of feeling, but the different moral and conceptual framings that are driving the debate.
The ‘addiction’ analogy
One prominent argument is that social media should be treated like alcohol or tobacco: addictive, harmful and something we will regret failing to regulate decisively. The logic is precautionary. We have been here before. We were too slow with smoking. We underestimated alcohol. We allowed commercial interests to shape the terrain.
I understand the appeal of this reasoning. Algorithmic systems are not neutral. They are designed to capture attention and optimise engagement, often in ways that intensify comparison, polarisation and emotional volatility. I no longer think of social media simply as a mirror reflecting existing social problems. Platform architectures and algorithmic incentives do actively shape conditions of harm through complex human–technology entanglements. Young people themselves tell us they are fed up of the exploitative dynamics at play.
But I am not persuaded that the analogy holds. Alcohol and tobacco are discrete, bounded substances with relatively clear physiological risks. Social media is not a single product or behaviour. It is now part of the infrastructure of social, educational and civic life. Treating access itself as the central danger risks oversimplifying both the problem and the solution.
‘Something is better than nothing’
A second line of argument is more pragmatic: voluntary regulation by platforms has failed, so a strong intervention is necessary – even if imperfect – while broader structural reform unfolds. Here, there is greater overlap with my own position. It acknowledges that the current regulatory environment is insufficient and that commercial incentives matter.
However, even this approach can slide into what we might call unsafe certainty: assuming that because something is decisive, it is necessarily protective. Regulation never operates in a vacuum. Young people are adept at workarounds. That does not inherently invalidate regulation – otherwise we would regulate nothing – but it does mean that we must remain reflexive about unintended consequences.
We know, for example, that many young people are reluctant to disclose difficulties to adults. We also know that digital safety education often remains risk-avoidant and moralising, rather than equipping young people with ethical judgement and relational competence. If bans intensify secrecy or displacement into less visible spaces, we may undermine education and safeguarding rather than strengthen them. The promise of safety thus deserves scrutiny.
Why are we banning a cohort?
One feature of the debate that troubles me is how quickly the policy focus has shifted towards banning an entire group defined solely by age. There is something ethically uncomfortable about locating risk – or at least the response to risk – primarily in young people themselves, rather than in the environments they are asked to navigate.
Social media harms are not experienced by teenagers alone. Algorithmic amplification, misinformation, polarisation and comparison-based pressures shape adult lives too. Yet the policy spotlight has narrowed onto adolescents as the site of intervention.
Bans risk becoming a way of avoiding larger societal conversations about platform governance, data extraction, surveillance capitalism and the economic logics underpinning digital life. Focusing intensely on one age group can obscure the fact that the architectures generating harm are systemic.
Push and pull
Young people’s social media use is also shaped by both push and pull factors. Over decades, offline public spaces for adolescents have narrowed. Youth presence in shopping centres, parks and streets has often been problematised or restricted. Many of us – myself included – remember being tolerated at best, pathologised at worst.
Digital spaces have, in part, filled that vacuum. They are not benign. But they are also sites of sociality, creativity and belonging.
If we focus only on prohibition, we risk overlooking the question of what we are building in their place. What kinds of public, communal and relational spaces are we investing in? What forms of participation are genuinely available? Banning access follows a longer trajectory of regulating young people’s use of space, often without expanding alternatives.
Beyond exclusion
Through our Safe Uncertainty work at Reimagining RSE, we argue that certainty imposed from above does not always translate into safety on the ground. In some contexts, heavy-handed regulation has reduced openness, inhibited dialogue and weakened relational trust. Safety is not secured simply by drawing firmer lines.
This does not mean abandoning regulation. On the contrary, platform infrastructures are often deeply problematic and require reform. It means designing regulation that targets business models and architectures; education that cultivates ethical reflexivity rather than avoidance; and social conditions that make meaningful participation possible.
The debate about social media bans has revealed a shared concern: adults are anxious, and not without reason. But if we respond to complexity with exclusion alone, we risk narrowing the field of vision at precisely the moment it needs widening.
The question is not whether harm exists. It does. The question is where we locate it, and whether our responses engage with its systemic roots, or simply relocate it.