Banning children from social media won't fix Big Tech harms

The UK government’s public consultation on how to protect children online closed at midnight last night with over 81,000 responses. In recent months, much of the public debate has centred on whether to ban social media for under 16 year olds.

Zoe Kleinman, the Technology Editor for the BBC said today: “When I started covering online safety 12 years ago my own children were toddlers and it all felt like another world to me personally: it isn’t anymore. They have grown up with eleventy billion parental controls and screentime limits and messaging restrictions - and still in that time more children have died, others have had the most traumatic experiences, and I continue to worry about them.”

The Balanced Economy Project’s view is that banning children from social media will not fix the harms caused by Big Tech. The below edition of our weekly Counterbalance newsletter, originally published in January, sets out our position in full:

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The UK government this month launched a consultation on children’s social media use, exploring the potential option of banning under-16s from digital platforms amid a growing political urgency surrounding online harms.

The debate — which reignited late last year when the Australian government took the decision to restrict children’s access to social media — has increasingly been framed as a test of whether politics and politicians can finally “stand up to Big Tech” in the name of child safety. However, the consultation risks pulling policy towards the most visible lever rather than the most effective one.

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Focusing on whether children should be allowed on social media steers attention away from the more complex question of how to rein in the influence of a handful of powerful companies that dominate the digital economy. A ban might be popular with voters, but it leaves root causes of harm largely intact. It risks becoming a celebrated but superficial fix that leaves Big Tech’s power fundamentally untouched.

The UK’s consultation notes how a ban may limit children’s exposure to online harms, and takes lessons from Australia’s recent decision, suggesting that it may help children avoid spending excessive time on screens engaging with content that can harm their wellbeing. What the consultation does not squarely address is why these harms have persisted despite years of evidence, warnings and public concern. The problem is not simply children’s choices online, but the market structure and incentives shaping what they see and how long they stay.

A small number of firms, including Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and Elon Musk’s X, dominate the sector. Their scale, wealth and reach allow them not only to shape user experiences, but to continue to operate in the face of criticism about the risks their products are repeatedly linked to harm.

Many of the harms children face online are also not accidental due to how these systems prioritise engagement over care. That’s why an under-16 ban is such an appealing political answer, and why it also misses what’s driving the problem. When a small number of companies dominate the market, they don’t feel much pressure to change, whether that is from competitors, regulators or Parliament. Fines become part of the cost of doing business and lobbying is par for the course.

Age limits on social media platforms may reduce exposure for some children. But this requires age checks and civil liberties arguments warn against this, as age verification can quickly look like a digital ID layer, forcing users to choose between privacy and internet access.

And even if you accept the trade-off, an age ban still leaves the underlying incentives intact. It doesn’t change what makes the platforms risky for children in the first place. These are products designed to hold attention, maximise attention via algorithms, and offer features that keep children coming back.

If the goal is child safety, the starting point can’t only be who is allowed on the platform. It has to be who sets the rules, who benefits from the status quo and what would actually force change. There needs to be acknowledgement of the market power of Big Tech if we are to hold them to account.

The UK’s debate also exposes an awkward tension. The government can sound genuinely concerned about the impact of social media on children, while also making clear its ambition to attract those very same Big Tech firms to its shores. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has gone as far as to create “AI Growth Zones”, intended to speed up planning and grid connection for data centre hubs owned by the world’s biggest tech firms.

None of this is to deny the reality of online harms, especially for children. It does show how reluctant the government can be to challenge firms whose size and capital it sees as economically useful, even when those products shape everyday life in ways that spill harm onto younger users.

Without tougher enforcement, stronger competition policy and a willingness to curb the power of dominant Big Tech platforms, bans and age limits risk becoming another headline measure, that changes little for children day to day.