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This week marks a positive moment for public health and for the wellbeing of children and adolescents. Hearing Keir Starmer’s announcement proposing a ban on social media for under-16s, I felt an optimism I have not experienced for years regarding the mental health of young people in the UK (Social media firms hit back as Starmer announces ban for under-16s in UK, 15 June).

As a child and adolescent psychiatrist, I have spent over a decade witnessing the impact of online exposure on those I meet in clinic. The harms extend far beyond the visible issues of self-harm, suicidality and eating disorders. They include pervasive bullying, the normalisation of misogyny and racism, and the quiet erosion of time, attention and self-worth through endless, valueless scrolling. Increasingly, children turn to artificial substitutes for connection – chatbots and curated feeds – in an online environment that often fosters hostility rather than support.

I have encountered deeply troubling cases: boys groomed into criminal exploitation while on their phones in school, girls meeting adult strangers from their bedrooms and teenagers exchanging explicit images as if it were expected. Many young people now live almost entirely online, with sleep, physical activity and family relationships deteriorating accordingly. Their attachment to devices resembles addiction.

While those seen in clinical services may represent the most affected, countless others experience subtler but cumulative harms – rising anxiety, reduced happiness and diminishing capacity for real-world relationships. Meanwhile, the platforms are carefully engineered, drawing on behavioural principles akin to gambling, to maximise engagement.

We have acted before in the face of public harm, from cycle safety to smoking bans. These measures were once controversial, but are now accepted as necessary. This proposal should be viewed in the same light. If we are serious about safeguarding children, decisive action is overdue.
Dr Rory Conn
Consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist, Exeter

• It’s always been my dream to exist in a world that uses snail mail, fanzines and social clubs, but this ban on social media for under-16s is not setting the foundations for a screen-free utopia. Instead, it’s scolding teens for living in the online world we were born into.

I don’t disagree with the principle. Yes, parents of the nation, phones are bad. However, social media is not an isolated section of our lives that can easily be removed. Its heavy usage is a habit born out of a lack of anything else to do, and something that has cemented together the cracks in our lives with many positives: revision resources, tutorials for hobbies and fandoms to engage with.

Not once have I heard anyone – lawmakers or parents – consider what will fill those cracks when they are crudely hollowed out. Why don’t they speak to us? I exist as part of a lost generation in the eyes of the government. Sixteen now, and too late to be saved. Why don’t they ask how social media has affected us and make laws tailored to the real world rather than indulging in some political-saviour complex?

We’re being treated like one huge monolith, all obsessed with vaping and phones, and strange cryptic memes that parents will never be able to understand. Modern is scary to parents, but they forget that one they were modern too.

I want social media to just go away too. But in this attempt to “save the children”, many adults seem to have begun acting rather childishly themselves.
Clara O’Grady
York

• Ian Russell expresses disappointment with the proposed social media ban (Keir Starmer promised me he would end the harm caused by social media. But this ban betrays that promise, 15 June), proposing that social media companies be obliged to alter their algorithms. Many people have also commented on how difficult the ban will be to enforce in practice. Cory Doctorow, in his 2025 book Enshittification, proposes that what he calls the “administerability” problem can be dealt with by requiring “interoperability” between platforms, whereby lists of contacts, groups and so on, which serve to keep users on a given platform, can be moved between platforms without difficulty. Users recognising the toxic effects of using one can easily move to another which is less disturbing. Once differences between platforms became well-known, parents might also find it easier to encourage their youngsters to use less harmful ones, rather than have a losing fight over a ban.
Dr Peter Jarrett
London

• In announcing a blanket social media ban for the under-16s, our government has got the diagnosis largely correct, but the remedy unimaginatively wrong. As has been clearly shown elsewhere, bans don’t work, not least since they are an incentive to creatively tech-savvy generations to find and exploit workarounds, or simply to lie.

A ban is a hasty and lazy response that will only punish the victims, not the perpetrators. Car accidents outside schools are not sensibly addressed by banning children walking there. To address the ills of social media, which are many and pernicious, it is the app developers, not the users, that need to be firmly regulated. Just as there are hygiene rules for food production, there needs to be strict limits and controls on how platform features operate that will protect everyone, not just those under an arbitrary age limit.
Tony Side
Hitchin, Hertfordshire

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