"Nobody who has ever met a teenager, or read the news, will be completely at ease with the role of social media in young lives. There are horrific effects, which have been well documented and inadequately addressed ever since the death of 14-year-old Molly Russell, who took her own life in 2017 after viewing suicide and self-harm content online. Many platforms, even those that seem anodyne, are purpose-built to spur anxiety, self-doubt, self-harm, anything that delivers attention."
"We have this completely contradictory environment in which a nine-year-old can't walk to school alone without turning into grist for a radio phone-in about parental neglect, and yet tech companies with a record of generating emotional distress for profit are allowed access to children's bedrooms. Grok can generate sexualised images of children on demand, and the UK government calls it a matter for Ofcom."
Kemi Badenoch proposes banning under-16s from using social media, a policy that gains cross-spectrum agreement from figures such as Andy Burnham. Social media produces horrific, well-documented harms for young people, including exposure to suicide and self-harm content linked to the 2017 death of 14-year-old Molly Russell. Many platforms are purpose-built to spur anxiety, self-doubt and self-harm by optimizing for attention, producing emotional distress for profit. There is a stark asymmetry in acceptable risk: children face scrutiny in physical spaces while tech companies retain unregulated access to children's bedrooms and private lives. Emerging generative tools can produce sexualised images of children, and features like location services further complicate privacy and wellbeing.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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