How the social media ban could reshape how all of us use the internet
"Everyone's really upset mum - loads of them have got their own YouTube channels." That was my 12-year-old son's summary of how the news about
"Everyone's really upset mum - loads of them have got their own YouTube channels." That was my 12-year-old son's summary of how the news about the social media ban for UK under-16s went down in his classroom. Exactly how a bunch of 12-year olds might have ended up with their own channels in the first place when the minimum age is supposed to be 13 shows just how big a change in culture the government is trying to make.
In Preston, school pupil Isabella went viral when a BBC colleague asked her on-camera what she would do instead with the nine hours of screentime she had racked up over the previous weekend: "stare at the wall," she deadpanned. The exact logistics of the ban have yet to be set out but it is very possible that its introduction will herald the biggest ever change in the UK in terms of how everyone, children and adults alike, accesses the internet.
Millions of us might have to share some official ID which includes our date of birth, in order to access a whole range of platforms from next spring. The
ban has been broadly welcomed by campaigners, including a group of bereaved parents who say their children died as a result of a variety of harms on social media.
The BriefWire