Growing Up in the Online World – Our Response to Social Media Bans

Below is a summary of our position and recommendations. A full response can be accessed here.

Key position

Blanket social media bans risk reducing what is fundamentally a systemic, technological, and commercial issue to a young people’s problem, thereby individualising the problem as if it were inherently caused by youth behaviour.

We argue that the issue is multifaceted and complex and cannot be addressed by focusing on a single factor or actor alone. Many harms are embedded in platform design, including algorithmically driven interaction, weak moderation, and commercially incentivised architectures. Effective policy should therefore recognise shared responsibility across governments, technology companies, families, and users, while addressing the economic models that shape digital environments and strengthening access to digital literacy development: training for professionals and learning for young people and parents. At the same time, digital wellbeing requires a broader conceptualisation. Rather than focusing narrowly on individual use of digital technologies or their screen time, i.e., a human-computer interaction, it is key that policy also recognises young people’s online lives as social and relational, shaping identity, belonging, learning, creativity, and civic participation within complex digital ecosystems. Accounting for the quality of digital engagement is key to developing a more comprehensive understanding of digital safety and wellbeing.

Recommendations:

While social media bans may reduce social media use and increase engagement in offline activities such as sports, reading, and family time, these reductions are currently still partial, given that circumvention of restrictions is still widespread, and long-term mental health benefits remain inverified.

Our work with young people focused on their digital experiences indicates that social media bans risk obscuring the structural sources of harm. Online risks are shaped primarily by platform design, commercial incentives, and insufficient regulatory power, rather than by youth participation alone.

These discussions present an opportunity to refocus policy on:

• Proportionate and effective regulation through international collaboration and engagement with jurisdictions holding significant regulatory influence, particularly the United States, to ensure the effective enforcement of standards and sanctions
• Corporate accountability
• Rights-based, empowerment-focused pedagogical approaches
• Shared societal responsibility
• A broader understanding of wellbeing as contingent on positive, intersubjective experiences online
• Expansion of safe, structured opportunities for youth engagement in offline settings