Children of the algorithm: in support of a social media ban

I

n the boardrooms that control our cortisol economies, tech executives rub their hands with glee and continue, avariciously, to guard the profits they have earned out of children’s dependency. Many of my peers describe to me how they know the impacts of social media on their mental health but just can’t stop scrolling, feeling like they lose agency, their fingers virtually controlled by the media moguls. There is only one way of describing this: it’s an addiction.

Yet, we continue to act as if social media is somehow different from other addictive substances. We wouldn’t give alcohol or nicotine to our under fives, so why do we treat social media as an exception? 

It would be tempting to think that a ban for under 16s is an Orwellian overstep, an extension of the government’s nanny state solution to online safety. It would be tempting to think that a ban is too radical and reforms are more proportionate. It would be tempting to think that social media is an innocuous land full of candy floss, pink unicorns, and fluffy bunny rabbits.

But let’s not lose sight of the fact that the fundamental aim of algorithms is to feed us with what grabs our attention. And what grabs our attention, particularly that of teenagers, is extremism, dangerous sexual content, and violence. Young people are particularly vulnerable to this content – because our brains and identities are still forming. Our perceptions of body, belonging and truth are increasingly being shaped not by community, but by code. 42 per cent of children now worry about their mental health, more and more young people are radicalised by the alt-right pipeline, and excessive scrolling has been found to “impair our ability to plan, stay focused and make sound decisions”. Pretty worrying, right?

I don’t dismiss the academic argument posed by many children’s mental health charities that a ban could push some young people onto darker parts of the internet, out of reach of the Whitehall servants’ manicured fingers. But I think it’s rather like suggesting that we shouldn’t ban cigarettes because a few will start rolling their own. The solution to dependency is not to surrender, but to design resilience – to reimagine what a healthy society would look like when not gamified by Silicon Valley’s dopamine merchants.

Every other major public health challenge – from tobacco to road safety – has required regulation, education and cultural change. Why should social media be any different? Platforms that amplify outrage and comparison should not be left to the market’s invisible hand, when its influence upon our young minds is so visibly corrosive.

Society owes us young people a digital ecosystem that does not prey on our psychology for profit, where friendship is not gamified and attention is not auctioned off to the highest bidder. I am not pretending that a ban is a panacea, but it is a vital first step to break this addiction cycle.