Britain’s halls of power echo with calls for a radical overhaul: barring kids under 16 from social media entirely. Inspired by Australia’s pioneering laws, this push promises to dismantle the gateways to digital danger.
The catalyst? Alarming stats from the Children’s Commissioner showing one in five UK youth experiencing severe online harms yearly. Platforms’ addictive designs, critics say, rival tobacco in their impact on developing psyches.
Australia’s approach—enforced via the Online Safety Act—deploys cutting-edge tools like behavioral biometrics to enforce bans, yielding tangible drops in cyberbullying reports. UK strategists plan an even tougher regime, integrating it with school curricula on safe surfing.
Challenges abound: enforcement costs could run into billions, and global platforms threaten legal showdowns. Supporters, including celebrities like Elton John, frame it as a moral imperative.
As the debate rages, pilot programs loom. Success here might cascade globally, reasserting state authority over profit-hungry algorithms in the name of innocent minds.