Social Media Bans Will Require a Safety Net

In April 2025, Luxembourg’s Ministry of Education, Children and Youth implemented regulations on the use of smartphones and similar connected devices in primary and secondary schools, as part of its Screen Life Balance campaign launched at the start of the 2024/2025 school year.

According to the ministry, the Screen Life Balance campaign aims to significantly reduce screen time and promote a better balance between digital activities and real-life experiences among children and adolescents. The introduction of this legislation is part of a worldwide shift in the rules governing how young people access social media and use smart devices.

In December 2024, Australia introduced the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024, a piece of legislation that prohibits minors under the age of sixteen from holding an account on certain social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. In January of this year, France’s Assemblée Nationale approved a bill aimed at banning social media for minors under the age of fifteen, the legislation also includes a ban on mobile phones in high schools. Greece will ban access to social media for children under the age for fifteen from January 2027. Italy, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain are all introducing similar legislation in the coming months, and other countries plan to introduce a requirement for parents to consent to their children accessing social media platforms.

On a broader scale, the European Parliament in November agreed on a resolution calling for a minimum age of sixteen and an age limit of thirteen for video-sharing services and "AI companions".  While not ⁠legally binding, it represents a blanket shift in attitudes towards the effects of the online world on the young. India, China, the UK and many other countries are also considering taking similar action.

The negative effects of social media

The reasons for these bans stem from issues such as mental health concerns, addiction to “screen time”, exposure to harmful and inappropriate content, data privacy concerns and cognitive impacts on learning and development. Each of these would be significant on their own, together they represent the foundations of future problems which are only now being understood for what they are and what they could represent.

As the popularity of social media exploded in the 2010s, terms such as “social media anxiety”, “internet addiction” and “cyberbullying” came to the fore. What had originally been regarded as a way of connecting people and creating a more global online community is now developing into a full blown mental health crisis, primarily because the companies behind these technologies were allowed to operate unregulated and utilise techniques which have created a form of digital addiction. 

Those companies have now grown into highly influential, multi-billion dollar entities which have leeched into every corner of the online world, creating an environment which necessitates their presence for businesses to be successful, people to be accepted socially and for information to be distributed. In the old days of printed media, you could at least choose which news you wanted to read. Today, it is provided without warning via a series of algorithms you are not allowed to turn off or even investigate to understand their workings. The popularity of the content pushed by these algorithms then becomes a trend, making it permeate across both social and traditional media domains via content providers who are essentially forced to share it else their level of relevancy will diminish. That is just the tip of the social media iceberg.

The implications of digital exposure

When it comes to children, the impacts of exposure to this system are both immediate and long term and also potentially devastating for a whole generation.

As the popularity of smart devices exploded throughout the last decade, coupled with the growing influence of social media and private messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, educators and psychologists became increasingly aware of their impact on children’s attention spans, sleeping patterns and academic performance. In the early days of the internet most could only access it via a single, static computer somewhere in one’s house. Today, it is everywhere.

Unsurprisingly, this has led to a have/have-not scenario where the age and value of one’s device(s) become both a symbol of social status and a means of gatekeeping. This is hardly a new phenomenon; people have judged each other for the clothes they wear, the house/neighbourhood they live in and the way they think for as long as humans have interacted. However, transpose that mentality onto children in the 21st century and you have a recipe for psychological disaster. Not having the right phone or not having a phone at all is now a true means of exclusion in a society where digital communication has replaced face-to-face interaction and has become a necessity to function. Perversely, the need to have a such a device to provide access has led to a whole new arena for bullies to flourish. The days of leaving school problems at the gate are long gone. They now follow children around 24 hours a day. The psychological impacts of this are sadly being played out in the real world.

Another considerable area of concern is the level of access children have to age-inappropriate material. To a degree, this has always existed in many forms; books, films and visual media not intended for a child’s eyes were often accessible with a little effort. However, today, all forms of inappropriate media are but a click away and with little to no barriers in between. This media can also be shared as quickly as it can be found and without any external indication to parents that it has been passed on or received. Parental tools do exist on digital devices but experience shows that these are easier to circumvent than most parents would initially imagine.

It could be argued that most worrying of all is the detrimental effect upon a child’s cognitive abilities and, specifically, attention span. Social media and smart devices can affect children’s cognitive abilities by altering attention, memory and thinking skills, with prolonged exposure to the stimulation of content and constant notifications fragmenting attention patterns, making it harder for children to concentrate on sustained tasks. A 2018 study found that from infancy increased screen exposure can be linked to developmental issues in language, memory and overall cognitive performance, particularly when it replaces activities that support brain development such as reading, sleep and real-world interaction. A 2026 study found that social media use can be linked to measurable cognitive effects specifically in adolescents aged ten to nineteen years. The study concluded that problematic social media use is associated with increased inattention and impulsivity, traits which are closely related to reduced concentration and weaker executive functioning.

In short, this is a problem which affects all ages of children, regardless of the stage of their cognitive development.

The legacy of digital dependence

The impact of social media bans or limiting access to such platforms will not be fully know for some time but, in describing the issue as a health crisis, it has, in my opinion, correctly positioned the issue alongside the detrimental effects of alcohol, narcotics and tobacco. All of which, no sensible parent wants their child exposed, let alone addicted to. 

However, in classifying social media as such, we need to approach how rehabilitation will work. That may sound like a weighty word to use for the impact of removing a child’s access to Facebook or their digital device but, given that these platforms founded much of their success by utilising forms of cognitive addiction, and have been under investigation for doing so, it is safe to assume that some level of rehabilitation will be required and it will be a bumpy road in achieving it. Cold turkey or the solutions of pre-internet generations will not suffice here.

There will now, undeniably, be a generation of people who will be named in reference to their exposure to social media and the negative effects it has had upon them. If Generation X was defined by our parents telling us to simply go outside and play and find a means of keeping ourselves entertained, resulting in people of that age growing up to become fairly self-sufficient and hardened to the setbacks of everyday life, “Generation Social Media” will be defined by their cognitive development and how they have adapted to society having first been raised on the addictive nature of social media before having it taken from them before they themselves could understand the underlying damage it has likely caused. This could have a detrimental effect on the educational and employment prospects of a large swathe of society.

It is our responsibility to ensure that we don’t just introduce legislation which simply pulls the carpet out from beneath the feet of children who have only ever known the digitally connected world which we built. We have allowed this problem to flourish to dangerous levels and need to prepare the psychological crash mats which many of these children will need. If we don’t, the consequences of this intervention could become as big a problem as the addiction itself. There’s not much to “Like” about that.