Making Media Studies compulsory would be far more effective than any social media ban

Teaching young people how to truly understand what they're bombarded with is far better than pretending we can prevent them ever encountering it.

Previously: The naked truth about press coverage of Starmer’s nude ban plan

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One way of looking at the history of the human group is that it has been a continuing struggle against the veneration of ‘crap’… We have in mind a new education that would set out to cultivate just such people — experts at ‘crap detecting’.

— Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969)

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Five years ago, in one of the earliest editions of this newsletter, I wrote about the ongoing effects of the Blair government’s war on Media Studies. And now, here we are on the day that Keir Starmer attempted to secure his legacy with the announcement of a social media ban for under-16s. The two things are connected. We are in a world where we are incessantly bombarded with ‘content’ but in which the idea of having the tools to deconstruct and analyse those messages is still derided as a Mickey Mouse subject.

In Downing Street this morning, Keir Starmer told an audience primed to hoot, whoop, clap and holler that:

Every parent can see it with their own eyes: Social media is making children unhappy. It’s making it easier for bullies to harass and abuse them. And it could even be harming their mental health, exposing them to content that is dangerous because that’s what grabs the attention. It’s designed to be addictive — of course it is… It stops children doing their homework, reading, playing with their friends outside, going to bed at a decent hour.

He harked back to a halcyon age — the 1970s — when he grew up free from the scourge of social media. I also grew up in a time before — the 1990s — when the internet lived in your desktop computer and experiments with chatrooms could be easily be interrupted by someone needing to use the home phone line. The idea that those times were immeasurably better is a sepia-toned fantasy.

To be different when I was a teenager was a very isolating thing. If you were growing up in a small town or the countryside in particular, you could find yourself without anyone else like you around. That was especially true for LGBT teens and people who were in any way neurodivergent. In polling by Savanta, commissioned by the government as part of the consultation process it undertook before deciding on this ban, 82% of young people said that social media helped them feel more connected to other people and 71% said it made them feel more included.

The survey conclusions include this key section:

[The data] points to broad support for stronger action to improve children’s safety online but a more mixed picture on the form that action should take. Social media is deeply embedded in [children and young people’s] everyday lives and both parents and CYP recognise that it brings real benefits as well as risks. The debate captured in these findings is therefore not simply about whether intervention is needed, but about which forms of intervention are seen as most appropriate, proportionate and effective.

Dive into the report on the consultation process and you’ll find evidence of significant efforts to push the government into deciding on a ban:

Many civil society and child safety organisations expressed support for restricting risky features and functionalities to u16s and, in some cases, to u18s. There was also strong support from a campaign of 33,000 responses to the consultation.

That reference to “a campaign of 33,000 responses” suggests the call for input was swamped with proforma responses. Later in the document, that suspicion is backed up with facts:

A further 33,141 pro forma emails organised by a campaign were received.

That campaign was Raise The Age, organised by a group called Health Professionals for Safer Screens, which in turn is linked to the Smartphone Free Childhood movement. They managed to very effectively put their thumb on the scale. Meanwhile, expert voices were drowned out:

Many respondents, particularly from industry, opposed a blanket minimum age of access, instead arguing for either a risk-based or age-differentiated access. Several of those who opposed cited risks of unintended consequences, lack of evidence, and a preference for alternative approaches. This view is shared by several civil society and academic respondents. Many respondents expressed concern or opposition, favouring risk-based or graduated approaches over blanket bans. Other respondents rejected an Australian-style ban, citing early evidence of ineffectiveness. Several respondents also warned that children may be less likely to report harms if accessing services is perceived as prohibited.

Organisations like the NSPCC don’t back the ban. Not even all campaigners for stronger regulation think it’s a good idea. Ian Russell, whose 14-year-old daughter Molly took her own life after viewing harmful content online, appeared on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg yesterday. He said of Starmer:

I can’t think of a reason [to rush] other than a political reason… If he’s playing politics, what he’s doing is gambling with young people’s lives, and I find that deplorable.

While Starmer’s big announcement was light on detail and the government’s press release following it didn’t do much to further flesh out the proposals, it did include the first ten services to which it plans to restrict access: Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, X, Kick, and Twitch. It also proposes to introduce a digital curfew for 16 and 17-year-olds, at the same time as it is planning on dropping the voting age to 16. Old enough to vote, not old enough to manage their YouTube viewing habits.

This is a plan to build a wall and pretend that ropes, ladders, and grappling hooks don’t exist. When chat apps have been banned on school computers, kids have used Google Docs as makeshift chatrooms. They know how to access VPNs, and will disappear into Discord servers, find ways to get clone apps, and head for platforms that parents have absolutely no idea even exist. Beyond that, does the government really believe that making it harder to access YouTube is an educational benefit? It’s the world’s second biggest search engine; a vast store of knowledge.

Imagine a world in which the social media ban actually worked. While it might keep those imaginary 16-year-olds from seeing some horrible content, it won’t prepare them for the world they enter when the wall comes down. True media literacy is a more sustainable answer to the challenge of a world overrun with disinformation and misinformation. Locking the trapdoor and pretending that no one else has a key is a false promise. The young people who responded to the government’s survey know that far better than those parents who are persuaded that bashing the big red ‘ban this’ button will work.

The proper response to Starmer’s continued reminders that he is a father is a grim laugh. The timing and content of the proposal is so blatantly opportunist, a desperate lunge for legacy in the week of the Makerfield by-election, which looks likely to catapult Andy Burnham back into Westminster and kick of a leadership election.

Postman and Weingartner were writing in an era long before the internet and social media, but their insight is as useful as ever. Our world is even more swamped with crap than it was when they were writing — AI is the endless crap creating machine — and giving young people the skills to identify and disregard that crap is vital. Giving the generations that come after us that ability will help them far more than pretending that they can live their childhoods in some artificial recreation of the 1970s.

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