{"id":746,"date":"2026-03-18T14:42:34","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T13:42:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socialmediaban.lisboncouncil.net\/blog\/?p=746"},"modified":"2026-03-18T15:18:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T14:18:16","slug":"dont-ban-young-people-from-social-media-fix-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/socialmediaban.lisboncouncil.net\/blog\/dont-ban-young-people-from-social-media-fix-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Ban Young People from Social Media. Fix It."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Every few months, a new government somewhere announces a plan to ban teenagers from social media. Australia passed one. France is debating one. Across the European Union, pressure is growing. I understand why. The data is alarming, the anxiety is real, and the instinct to protect young people is not wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But here is what I have learned from advising the European Commission on youth digital rights, and from being a young person in Europe myself: a blanket ban is not protection. It is an oversimplification that fails to address the root cause. It removes young people from a space that has become essential to our lives, without ever asking why that space became dangerous in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The core problem is not merely that young people are on social media, but rather how those platforms were designed \u2014 and that no one was held accountable for it.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The real question is not whether to ban young people. It is whether we have the political courage to go after the actual source of harm: addictive algorithms, manipulative design, and bad moderation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We Are Already There And We Cannot Be Cut Off<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Let us start with what the evidence tells us about how central these platforms have become. According to Eurostat, nearly 90% of European youth aged 16 to 29 are active participants on social media in 2025, creating profiles, posting and engaging. That figure has risen steadily every year since 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

For many of us, these are not optional add-ons to social life. They are social life. They are where we organise, stay informed, find community and, for marginalised young people, LGBTQ+ youth, young people with disabilities, those in rural and peripheral regions, they are often the only safe space available. Cutting off access to these platforms does not make those young people safer. It makes them more isolated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That civic dimension matters too. The same Eurostat data show that nearly a quarter of young Europeans now use digital platforms for civic or political participation, a figure that outpaces the general population by four percentage points. Social media is not a distraction from democratic life. For our generation, it is part of how democracy works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Real Harm Is in the Design, Not the Access<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

None of this means social media is harmless. It is not, and I will not pretend otherwise. The mental health data is serious and demands serious responses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A European Commission\u2019s Joint Research Centre analysis based on PISA 2022 data found that nearly half of 15-year-olds across sampled European countries report symptoms of depression, and over half report anxiety. Female adolescents are disproportionately affected, with 60% experiencing depressive symptoms. The data show a consistent correlation: as time spent on social media increases, so do these risks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

But correlation is not the cause, and cause matters enormously for policy. When looking at what is actually driving these outcomes, the evidence points clearly to platform design: infinite scroll engineered to prevent stopping, autoplay that makes choice nearly impossible, algorithmic systems that prioritise content provoking the strongest emotional reactions, and push notifications calibrated to interrupt rest and sleep. The World Health Organisation’s Health Behaviour in School-aged Children study found that roughly one in ten adolescents now displays addiction-like social media behaviours: clinical symptoms including withdrawal and loss of control over usage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

These platforms were not accidentally addictive. They were deliberately designed that way. Banning users does nothing to change the design.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is why the approach being championed by organisations like 5Rights Foundation is so important and so different from a blunt ban. Rather than treating all social media as a single entity to be switched off, 5Rights has done the painstaking work<\/a> of disaggregating platforms into individual features, each of which was evaluated for its risk profile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Infinite scroll is not the same as a messaging function. Algorithmic amplification is not the same as a user profile. A livestreaming monetisation system poses different risks than a group chat. We should regulate each of these features on its own merits: banning the genuinely harmful, restricting the risky, and preserving what is valuable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This feature-by-feature approach is not theoretical. The tools already exist. The digital services act (DSA), the artificial intelligence act (AI act), the audiovisual media services directive (AVMSD): these frameworks, if properly enforced, give regulators the power to mandate healthy defaults, restrict behavioural advertising targeting minors, require algorithmic transparency and compel child impact assessments before any attention-maximising system is deployed against under-18s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inclusion Is Not a Side Note, It Is Central<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I want to make an argument that often gets lost in this debate: for the most vulnerable young people, losing access to social media is not an inconvenience. It can be devastating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Think of the LGBTQ+ teenager in a small town where coming out is dangerous. The young person with a disability for whom physical social spaces are not accessible. The refugee youth, separated from family and community, for whom a WhatsApp group is the only thread of belonging. The student in a peripheral region of a small Member State who found their first peer network online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A blanket ban does not protect these young people. It targets them. It tells them that the space where they found safety, community, and recognition must be closed because others found it harmful. And critically, it does not stop the harm; it drives young users toward unregulated, ungoverned platforms where protections are even weaker. The evidence consistently shows that heavy restrictions lead to displacement, not abstinence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any serious policy framework must grapple with this. Privacy-preserving, inclusive age verification, applied to specific high-risk features rather than entire platforms, is a far more proportionate approach than locking the door entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Education Is Infrastructure, Not an Afterthought<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Even the best platform regulation will not be sufficient on its own. Young people need to be equipped to navigate digital spaces critically, and right now, most of them are not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A survey of 30 countries by Ipsos found that 62% of respondents believe digital literacy is a school responsibility, yet in most European Member States, media literacy is not embedded in formal curricula across subjects. It is treated as a bolt-on, if it is treated at all. Youth organisations, non-formal educators, and youth workers are stepping in to fill the gap, but they are doing so without adequate resources and in an increasingly shrinking civic space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Here is the thing about banning young people from social media without investing in media literacy: when those bans expire or are circumvented, and they will be, young people enter those spaces even less prepared than before. You cannot build resilience by keeping people away from what they need to be resilient against.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I would like the European Union to Do<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The European Commission has the tools. The DSA, the AI Act and the AVMSD, properly enforced, these frameworks already give regulators the power to mandate healthy defaults for minors, restrict behavioural advertising, compel algorithmic transparency and require child impact assessments before any attention-maximising system is deployed against under-18s. What has been missing is not legal authority. It is political will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The path forward is clear. Enforce existing law, fully and without exemptions for platforms too large or too convenient to challenge. Bring forward the digital fairness act to target manipulation baked into platform architecture. Conduct the feature-by-feature risk evaluation because a WhatsApp message and an autoplay algorithm are not the same thing. Build age verification that is privacy-preserving and inclusive, applied only to specific high-risk features, not deployed as a tool of exclusion against the young people who most depend on these networks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And invest, seriously and structurally, in media literacy and offline youth spaces. Digital safety and physical community are not separate policy areas. Neglecting one often damages the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Young people are not the problem to be regulated. We are the stakeholders to be protected and the partners without whom good policy is impossible.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Social media that is safe and empowering is achievable. But not by locking young people out. By finally holding the right actors responsible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gabriele Battimelli<\/em> <\/strong>is an 18-year-old from Italy who is passionate about making technology work for people, rather than against them. He pursues this mission both through his technical work as a programmer and his active advocacy: he collaborates with the Italian Safer Internet Centre ‘Generazioni Connesse’ and serves across Europe as a Better Internet for Kids (BIK) Youth Ambassador.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every few months, a new government somewhere announces a plan to ban teenagers from social media. Australia passed one. France is debating one. Across the European Union, pressure is growing. I understand why. The data is alarming, the anxiety is real, and the instinct to protect young people is not wrong. But here is what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[32],"class_list":["post-746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nDon't Ban Young People from Social Media. 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