Dear readers,
How much social media did you grow up with? What were some of the things you were exposed to because of these platforms? Did the harms outweigh the benefits? Would your coming of age be better without them?
I’m asking these questions because I’ve been reading up on the increasingly popular policy of banning social media for minors. It’s an agenda that, as of today, is now set in motion in 42 countries—the ban is implemented in 7, passed in 4, in consideration in 15, proposed in 3, and under discussion in 13.
Australia became the first country to do so. It started implementing a nationwide social media ban for people under 16 on 10 December 2025, having passed the legislation in November 2024. Indonesia, where I’m based, implemented a similar ban on 28 March 2026, making it the first non-Western country to enforce the ban. This month, on 15 June, the UK announced its very own under-16 social media ban. The policy is expected to come into force in Spring 2027.
This topic caught my attention as I was working on previous editions of An Algorithmic Becoming, the series I’ve been running to explore our lives lived with algorithmic technologies. In conversations for the edition “Gambling with algorithms”, I started asking how the ban was affecting content creators. For “The offline premium”, I inquired about the relationship between our over-reliance on digital technologies and our shrinking offline world—and how a social media ban wouldn’t necessarily bring back infrastructures of leisure we’ve lost in the latter. At some point, the series would have to tackle the story about the ban directly.
In May, I reached out to a fellow digital anthropologist based in the UK to understand the UK-specific context of the social media ban. We set up a call in June, just a few weeks after the UK concluded its three-month public consultation for the ban, and, as we later found out, a few days before the government announced it would go forward with the policy. My conversation with Jemima Gibbons, anthropologist and founder of Sticks & Stones, an ethical tech consultancy, took place on 11 June. During this conversation, we were still discussing the likelihood of the ban being implemented. Just four days later, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced the ban. And exactly a week after that announcement—on 22 June—he resigned, having served as prime minister for just under two years. It’s been an eventful month, to say the least.
Based on the figures gathered during the public consultation, it was obvious why a ban was introduced. There was overwhelming support for it. Between 2 March and 26 May, the government received more than 116,000 responses for its open-link questionnaires to map attitudes towards potential restrictions—among which 54,000 were from parents and 14,000 from children. 9 out of 10 parents said they wanted social media banned for under-16s.
It’s important to note that this public consultation data is self-selecting, not a statistically representative evidence base. Meaning, you’re seeing responses from people who are more motivated and more familiar with government processes. Savanta, a London-based research company, conducted a separate nationally representative panel survey. Whereas the ban saw 91% parental support in the public consultation, it received 76% support in the panel survey. For children and young people, support for the ban is lower in the public consultation than in the panel survey—19% vs 29%. The clearest position for this group is selective access rather than a blanket ban. There’s clearly a generational divide here.
Look, I’m not a parent. I don’t know what it’s like to watch your kid struggle with anxiety, depression, or self-harm because of social media. I hope it never comes to that. But if I were a concerned parent and I saw signs of my kid struggling, I wouldn’t care much about the scientific debate of causality vs correlation; whether or not social media actually contributes to declining well-being. I’d simply want for something, anything, to be done. And perhaps it is exactly this urge that governments across the world are banking on.
For this episode, I wanted to feature a dissenting voice in the discourse. Amidst the broad sweep of support for a social media ban for minors, some advocate for a more nuanced approach in the way children and young people engage with social media. Because for young people today, the offline and online are not two separate lives. The UK government acknowledged this to an extent. A public document to kickstart the national conversation on ways to keep children safe online states: “It is no longer accurate or meaningful to present children’s lives as divided into online and offline spheres. So much of our life is lived online and we need to make sure it is safe and enriching for our children, just as we are doing in the real world.” That should also serve as a basis to say that when you significantly limit a child’s online movement, you are not only restricting their online lives, you are shrinking their world.
Jemima shares this concern. She is against an outright ban. Having worked in the digital industry and as a parent to a 19-year-old, she understands the harms young people are exposed to online, but also the benefits. She sees social media as a public space. Rather than removing children and young people from public squares, interventions should aim to improve the quality of the overall square.
My conversation with Jemima is part of a series of conversations I’m having for my next long-form edition. I decided to flip the approach I did for my last edition, where I published the long-form before the conversation. I thought it might be nice to have you, dear readers, listen to the conversations I’m having for my long-forms and get early insights as to how these conversations shape the piece. I’m still in the process of gathering material for that next edition. If you know anyone I should speak to about this topic, let me know.
As a public service announcement, this episode is available on Substack, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and, as the common saying goes, “wherever you get your podcast”.
Enjoy the listen.
Sincerely,
Dita
