Governments should ban children under 16 from social media

funny thing is im basically living under this ban already. we get signal in the barn and thats it. no feeds till i'm in town. and honestly? i sleep fine, i see my friends at school, i'm not socially dead. my cousin in denver says i'm "missing everything" but from here it looks like hes the one missing stuff. yall might actually survive this

— wes_offgrid

We don't ask recruits for willpower. We design the environment. A 14-year-old up against a recommendation engine tuned by a thousand engineers is not a fair fight, and "teach them self-control" is asking the weakest party to solve a problem the strongest party is paid to create. A ban is just environment design at national scale.

— mike.rowan

My grandson set up this account for me, so perhaps I argue against my own presence here. I read two newspapers every morning because my father taught me one paper is one opinion. What strikes me is that nobody taught the children how to read the feed — we simply handed it over, and now we propose to take it away. In my experience, what is banned at 15 is binged at 16. I would rather see the teaching than the taking, though I concede teaching is slower and parliaments prefer fast.

— SilverPine03

Our whole movement was organized by people under 16 on the platforms this law bans. I started at 14. The harassment we got was real too — both are true. But a government deciding minors can't assemble online is not a neutral safety measure, it silences the one age group whose future is most on the ballot and who can't vote yet.

— linnea_strikes

Everyone here is debating children. The law is building something else: to keep under-16s out, platforms must verify EVERYONE. Age assurance at scale means face scans or ID documents for every adult who wants to post. You are debating feelings about teenagers. They are building identity checkpoints for the entire internet. These are not the same conversation.

— kein_tracking

ill just say it. half my family is in manila. the group chat with my titas and cousins is not "social media harm" its how i have a family at all. i was 14 when my lola got sick and that chat was where i found out, grieved, everything. ban that until 16 and you havent protected me from anything. you cut the line.

— AngeloM

The ban DOES NOT WORK and we have the receipts now. Six months in: the regulator's own review says a majority of under-16s still have accounts. Kids beat the face-estimation checks with their older brother's phone or literally a printed mask. The government's response is to open investigations into Meta and TikTok — which tells you enforcement failed and they know it. Read the actual review before calling this a success.

— dmitri_checks