Around the world, from Australia to the United Kingdom, governments are bringing in bans on social media for children. Critics of these bans say children are being used as a convenient excuse to bring more surveillance, but in this editorial I will take what governments are saying at face value.
They say that social media causes a whole range of mental health problems and allows bullies to continue bullying after school hours. As adults, social media doesn’t really open us to much bullying as most people have grown up by this point, but it is still causing mental health problems among this population due to the way people engage on these platforms - have you noticed how people post photos of themselves at parties or events, on vacation, with their new house or car, but hardly ever their latest demand letter to pay a credit card bill or some other bad news.
With lots of people doing this, it can feel like everyone else has a polished, near-perfect life, while yours is full of problems. In truth, everybody’s life has problems, but these don’t get broadcast online. In place of bullying, adults are more likely to face inferiority and loneliness issues with their use of social media and other online platforms. We already see it with seniors who might have trouble getting out of their houses, but there are plenty of younger people who sit in their bedrooms stuck online for too many hours, losing their ability to socialize.
I’m not going to advocate for a ban on social media for adults, because I think we are all old enough to make our own decisions, but I do have some other thoughts which I’ll get to below.
Social media has become quite adept over the last decade and a half at keeping users hooked on their platforms. Chief among these is Facebook, which allows you to scroll non-stop on a curated feed of posts that has been tailored to your interests, your Reels feed full of videos tailored to you, or click through Stories where you can see friends and family posting the best bits of their lives.
Meta knows what will keep you hooked, and that’s the content it shows to you; however, frequent use of Facebook and people’s posting habits inevitably lead to “upward social comparison” where you just see the best parts of people’s lives.
According to a study from 2013, before Facebook had Stories and Reels, envy was rampant among Facebook users. In the paper, researchers studied German students with an average age of 24. It found that:
“This study uncovers a rampant nature of envy on SNSs. According to our findings, passive following triggers invidious emotions, with users mainly envying happiness of others, the way others spend their vacations; and socialize. The spread and ubiquitous presence of envy on SNSs (social network services) is shown to undermine users’ life satisfaction.”
If you doubt the results of that paper, here is another that cites many other studies in Table 1 of the results section, showing a consistent positive correlation between social media usage and envy, as well as other negative emotions. Essentially, Stories especially create a false image of your contacts’ lives, where they always seem to be having good luck, success, and good stuff - this illusion is created by the bad stuff that happens in their lives being omitted from social media.
A sizable chunk of the social-media-using population, reacting to various things, including Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, has moved to alternative platforms like Bluesky and Mastodon, which are better in terms of privacy, corporate overwatch, and data tracking. In some cases, the feeds are still in chronological order because they don’t care about keeping you addicted!
While better, these platforms still don’t fully solve the human problem. Even without complex algorithms that track your interactions to decide what to show in your feed, these platforms still use user-driven sorting and metrics such as likes. Chronological feeds can still reward performative posting too, so issues like validation (getting likes) still exist on these platforms and can lead to the same health issues as posed by Facebook.
Aside from the impact social media has on an individual level, it has also become tremendously harmful to the way we consume news. You will know them: people on the far-left and far-right have become increasingly distrustful of the “mainstream media”, which, despite its own biases, generally reports actual things that have happened. Contrast this to the “news” that people get from social media, which sends users down hyper-partisan rabbit holes that sometimes include completely made-up "news".
I have once been sent a video of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer making a speech that he never made. It had been created using artificial intelligence. When I checked the URL again after a while (maybe a few weeks), the video was gone - funny that.
It’s not just the one person from whom I received this video consuming this type of garbage; according to the Reuters Institute 2026 Digital News Report, social media and video networks have become the most widely used way of accessing online news globally (54% of respondents used them). This is ahead of news organizations’ own websites and apps (51%). Also, it’s not just younger cohorts who are consuming news like this; it is affecting all age groups. This is a bit worrying too because older people may be less aware of what AI can do with video now and assume fake AI videos to be real, but a digital native could spot the forgery.
According to a report from Ofcom released this year, 56% of Brits reported seeing false or misleading news in the past year. That is a majority of people. As AI gets more sophisticated, fake news has the potential to lead to extremely dangerous outcomes.
I have already stated in a previous editorial that I think governments are going too far with age verification systems and bans, reducing people’s privacy in the process. Similarly, I am not saying that we adults should eradicate our online social media presence either; it can be extremely useful in some countries where much of the local news or information is published primarily on social media. However, to tackle the harmful effects, there are a few things I think we ought to be doing.
The main issue with social media is passive consumption, so my idea is that we should create intentional friction that makes it seem like too much work to keep opening these platforms. The most direct action you can take to increase friction is to remove the native social media apps from your phone, forcing you onto their respective websites instead, which sometimes have fewer features available.
Once we are accessing these sites from a browser, the next step is to never stay logged in. This creates an extra obstacle to accessing these sites passively. Now, when you want to check your social media, you can, but these extra steps can put you off from doing so if you’re just heading there passively to doomscroll.
Governments around the world are now bringing in social media bans for children; however, as has been pointed out by several commentators, including UNICEF, nothing is being done to reduce the harms of social media. While forcing these companies to make their platforms less addictive could work, the likelihood of that happening globally is low right now. In the meantime, by taking the steps I suggested, you can at least push these services far enough away that you don’t have to passively consume content that’s ultimately harmful to health when constantly consumed.