Readers on the UK’s social media ban: banning algorithms would be ‘far more effective’ for children’s safety online

April Cronin, Co Dublin Cronin retired from her post as the principal of a primary school in 2017 when the “pernicious effects” of social media began to show nationwide. “Not only do I strongly agree with the introduction of an under-16s social media ban, I would support the banning of smartphones for under-16s too,” she says. “Text-and-talk phones would allow young people use phones for communication with friends and family, manage safety issues.” Cronin says parents and guardians would have a “much better chance” of supervising internet access if children were restricted to larger devices such as laptops or iPads. “I am a retired primary school principal and am appalled at what we, as a society, have allowed to happen to children and young people in the last 20 years,” she says. Klaudia Broda, Co Westmeath IADT graduate Klaudia Broda says the ban will be unpopular but 'they’ll thank us for a lifetime' Broda recently completed her thesis on problematic phone use. She says the key point about social media is that it can be beneficial when used in moderation. “The problem, however, is that these platforms are specifically designed to be addictive – and anything designed to keep you hooked is incredibly difficult to use in moderation,” she says. She has recently graduated from IADT in Dún Laoghaire with a master’s degree in user experience design. An 18-year-old student she interviewed for her thesis said “checking social media feels like taking a sip of water – you just don’t think about it”. Broda would 100 per cent support a social media ban due to the dangers of cyberbullying, but also the impact it has on the “basics” for children’s self-esteem, sleeping patterns and decision-making. “In my research, I came across reports of teenagers spending over 10 hours a day on their phones, mostly using social media apps,” she says. Broda says the move might be an unpopular one but will work out in the end. “They’ll hate us for a while, but they’ll thank us for a lifetime,” she says. Mark Sugrue, Co Dublin Sugrue believes social media itself isn’t the problem but rather the algorithms designed to “hook you in and show you what the billionaire owners of these apps want you to see”. “It would be far more effective to ban algorithm-controlled feeds, and to do it for everyone, not just teens,” he says. As a parent of two teenagers that “can’t put the phone down”, particularly when they are off school, Sugrue sees algorithms as no different to slot machines that are designed to “keep you pulling the lever”. “Social media worked fine before these algorithms were imposed on us,” he says. Laura Maher, Co Wicklow Clinical psychotherapist Laura Maher says the ban will help parents to keep their children safe Having worked with children who have been abused or groomed, Maher, a clinical psychotherapist, says a social media ban “cannot come soon enough”. She says “horrendous ordeals” such as online shaming can have a deep impact on children who don’t have the “emotional capacity” to handle those situations. A mother of two twin boys aged 11, Laura says the ban will help parents to keep their children safe, but acknowledges, “Children will always find a way around things that are banned.” She says the ban “highlights how dangerous and how harmful social media and online platforms can be for young minds who are not equipped to deal with the complexity of the consequences when things go wrong”. Laura says the issues she tackled with psychiatric patients more than a decade ago, when she was pregnant with her boys, have since become even bigger. Ciarán Mac Lochlainn, Co Galway Mac Lochlainn, a software quality engineer, thinks a ban on social media for under-16s would be “problematic because adults would have to verify their identity and trust a provider with their passport or driving licence”. “Meanwhile, under-16s would just use a VPN to get around it,” he says, referring to virtual private networks, which can circumvent blocking mechanisms. Mac Lochlainn says it would be better to regulate the algorithms rather than implement a full ban so they would “no longer promote destructive and addictive behaviours”. The concern he has is how political content on social media can be completely partisan, showing the viewer “either really liberal content or toxic conservative content”. “What that does in society is create division in people that would otherwise have a lot in common if they spoke to each other,” he says. A further worry Mac Lochlainn has is that the potential use of a Government ID to confirm one’s age would present privacy concerns. Sharon, Co Laois As a secondary schoolteacher, Sharon, who did not give her surname, thinks social media should “definitely be banned” but doesn’t think parents will police their children. “There are ways around these bans,” she says. She believes some parents won’t stop their children from circumventing the ban, just as some parents place blame on teachers for their children’s poor behaviour or bad grades. “I don’t believe parents will face the battle with their own kids by stopping social media use,” she says. John*, Co Dublin John has worked as a software engineer for big tech companies in Ireland for more than 10 years and is in favour of a minimum age requirement, but believes the word “ban” is a bit draconian. “There is just minimum age legislation which regulates the age at which the State and we as a society believe these activities can be engaged in,” he says. As a parent of a child in their late teens, John says some social media apps are “actively hostile” towards parental control settings. John says the potential legislation wouldn’t be about enforcement, but about “empowering parents to enforce it themselves in the face of social pressure, and it is about changing societal norms and expectations”. “People did not expect the indoor smoking legislation to be enforceable, but the public enforced it amongst themselves,” he says. * This respondent has asked us not to use their real name