UK under-16 social media ban: fix the product, not the user

A social media ban for under-16s may protect children. It also admits the product is broken.

The UK government's plan is being sold as child protection. The headline is the age ban: under-16s kept off the big platforms. The more interesting details: livestreaming switched off, contact from strangers blocked, and possible overnight curfews and breaks in the endless scroll for under-18s.

Many of those changes are useful. But they are being applied by age, while the core design logic stays largely intact for everyone else.

That is worth discussing. If a feature is harmful enough to disable for a 15-year-old, it is hard to argue that the same feature is fine for the rest of us. The UK has decided to fix social media by removing the users, not by fixing the product.

The harm is not only about who is holding the phone. These feeds are built to hold attention, and much of the damage is the by-product of a system doing exactly what it was designed to do. An age gate changes none of that. It theoretically moves the youngest users out of range and leaves the machine largely untouched.

There is a fair reply. Some harm is about access, not design, and a hard limit does stop a stranger from reaching a 13-year-old in a way a redesign might not. The platforms have also had years to make their products safer and chose not to. Perhaps a ban is the only lever left that makes them act.

But we should be honest about what this is. We are not repairing a product that we have just called harmful. We are walling off the people we worry about most and letting the design and dangers remain for everyone who stays.

Are we protecting children, or admitting the product is broken and choosing not to fix it?