I'm not in favor of these social media bans, but I would think the benefit here is that without the ban your child will be in the "real world" while everybody else's is on social media. This would make the "real world" socialization benefits more difficult.

Enormous, unrelenting social pressure? A crying child telling you that they're completely cut off from their peers and social group? Day after day of arguments and pleading? Schools and scout groups and extra-curriculars that tacitly require your child to have a Facebook or WhatsApp account? And much much more!

It sounds like you're assuming a few things: 1. Where you've written "smartphone", you're using this as a proxy for social media, which is what this legislation purports to target. 2. aledevv is a parent. 3. aledevv has, for whatever reason, not withheld access to social media (I'm taking "smartphone" as a proxy for "social media") for their child. 4. What aledevv said they agree with is state-level restrictions on social media for children.

Please correct me if any of the above is a misunderstanding.

If the above are representative, then what I believe you've overlooked here is a the much more difficult issue:

Parents have power over children, at least up to a point, and many platforms provide help with exercising that power. Apple and Google provide some means to restrict social media access which place control in the hands of parents.

Parents do not, normally, have power over other people's children. Parents can influence in-person social circles, somewhat, but without withdrawing children from all situations where they interact with other children, including school, social media's influence upon a parent's children is still very strong via the indirect route.

When a child goes to school, attends a group activity outside of school, or socialises in real life with friends outside of school, there are always children in the groups they meet who either use social media themselves or have older siblings, friends or parents who use social media themselves and who influence those children themselves.

To be clear, I'm not giving any opinion about what's proposed here by the UK government. I wanted only to object to what looks like an oversimplification that makes a false assumption that parents have a level of control and influence that they really don't.

Same argument goes for cigarette and alcohol. Withholding access to them is a decision a parent can make. Are you for allowing children to purchase them?

Maybe they are already doing it. But they're allowed to want the same for others too.

Maybe they can't make real friends if all the others are engulfed in social media

They will want a smartphone if their friends have it.

You don't have children, do you? Being a know-it-all in an area you know nothing about. Denying a phone to one child is to isolate them among their peers. Denying it to all makes them equal again.

Sir this the UK you're talking about.

According to one poll, 75% of them will, yes

https://wtop.com/lifestyle/2025/08/what-kids-say-it-would-ta...

Those are far from easy do handle for majority of parents.

Banks keeps sending me warnings about some new ‘Nigerian prince’ level scams. They wouldn’t be doing it if grownups weren’t falling for them.

General population doesn’t want to setup piholes.

Locked down to what though? Bike rides and tag? I TRY to limit my child to 30 mins a day, but when she’s older there is gonna be peers that I will battling against.

Not when big tech is doing everything they can to bring harmful content to kids while pretending to sincerely offer guardrails.

Parents do not have infinite resources to 'take responsibility'. I do not think that is a practicable option, let alone a serious or optimal one.

> There are options that don't involve forcing everybody to prove their age and provide ID verification to access social media

Indeed. Assuming this is the real goal. That would require of people to trust the government. I in general trust no government.

What kind of class teaches 'tech-illiterate' parents to help their children not succumb to a multi-trillion dollar industry pushing out addictive and damaging content? It should be easy to develop such classes right? Maybe dust off the classes for 'health-illiterate' parents that were needed to stand up to the tobacco and alcohol industries? </s>

I'm in the UK; BlueSky already requires age verification for DMs, which I can no longer use.

Mastodon instances will probably block the UK if they are asked to implement it.

> hold parents more responsible for crimes that their children commit.

Oh yeah, punishing children for mistakes they need to make to learn not to make them and moving responsibility from parents to the government sounds like a great idea.

> Musk wrote, “Only by protesting REPEATEDLY and LOUDLY will there be any change!!”

I'm certainly not defending the man, but that comment to me is definitely not plainly seen as "advocating riots"... I'd call that a very disingenuous stretch of the truth.

If we're going to criticize people, I think we need to do it for the right reasons.

The Ban for U16s is only going to push those who seek it out to darker areas with more risk. And for those who don't its only going to shift the current harm done onto those same children once they are old enough to then legitimately access theses services. Implementing the ban isn't going to fix a systematic failing of social media providers. This is the first step in a thinly veiled plan to re-implement the already unpopular UK Digital ID plan, under the guise of "protect our kids".

Except this doesn't, because most of the rioters are adults.

In many of the previous riot/anti-immigrant violence cases, those arrested have substantial criminal records, which tends to lead to the "why is this person not in prison already?" discourse.

(look at how long the court system queues are some time. It can be years from offence to conviction!)

Parents have the choice of handing smartphones to their children. If cognition and future is that important, surely a parent wouldn't wait for government intervention