The recent announcement by Prime Minister Keir Starmer of a sweeping ban on social media access for children under 16—targeting major platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Facebook, and X—has been framed as a bold, protective measure. Set to take effect in spring 2027 following legislation before Christmas, it joins similar efforts in places like Australia. The stated goals are noble: shielding young people from predators, bullying, harmful content, and addictive design. Yet this approach is fundamentally flawed. It misdiagnoses the problem, punishes the victims rather than the perpetrators, and risks creating new harms while proving largely unworkable. Far from a prudent safeguard, it represents a draconian overreach that strips children of tools integral to modern life without meaningfully addressing the underlying threats.
Targeting Children Instead of Predators: Misplaced Priorities.
The core logic of the ban—that restricting children's access will make them safer—rests on a false dichotomy. Online predators, cyberbullies, and harmful content exist because platforms have failed to police them effectively, not because children are inherently drawn to danger. A more direct and effective strategy would be aggressive enforcement against the actual criminals: strengthening laws and resources to prosecute predators, mandating robust platform moderation, and holding tech companies accountable for algorithmic amplification of toxic material.
Banning access for under-16s is akin to combating shoplifting by closing the shops. It doesn't eliminate the thief; it merely inconveniences everyone else and drives illicit activity underground. Predators will not vanish when children turn 16—they'll simply shift tactics, targeting slightly older teens or using unregulated channels. Evidence from similar restrictions suggests that bans often displace rather than eradicate risks, pushing youth toward "darker corners of the internet" like unmoderated forums, VPNs, or private networks where oversight is even weaker.
This paternalistic focus on children ignores their agency and the positive roles social media plays. For many young people, platforms are lifelines for social connection, especially those who are isolated, neurodivergent, or facing mobility issues. They facilitate friendships, educational resources, creative expression, activism, and cultural exchange—experiences as vital to today's youth as playgrounds or telephones were to previous generations. Denying this "part of their lives" feels cruel, as if society is collectively deciding that young people's joy and autonomy matter less than an illusion of total safety.
Why the Ban Won't Achieve Its Aims.
Proponents cite mental health crises, bullying, and exposure to inappropriate content. While these are real concerns, blanket bans lack strong evidence of solving them. Studies and reviews indicate that simply delaying access does not reduce overall harm or guarantee better outcomes. Instead:
Risk displacement: Children may migrate to other screen-based activities (TV, gaming) or riskier online spaces. The ban doesn't reform addictive algorithms or harmful features; at age 16, users will encounter the same unaddressed problems without prior guided experience.
Limited impact on core issues: Predation and bullying thrive on poor moderation and weak enforcement. Tech companies have the data and tools to detect and prevent much of this—fines up to 10% of global revenue (as proposed) are a start, but enforcement has historically lagged. A ban shifts the burden to parents and children rather than fixing platform incentives.
Mental health nuance: Correlation between social media and rising anxiety/depression exists, but causation is debated. Factors like pandemic isolation, academic pressure, family dynamics, and broader societal changes play major roles. Bans overlook opportunities for digital literacy programs that teach self-regulation, critical thinking, and resilience—skills essential for navigating the adult world.
Moreover, the policy wasn't prominently featured in Labour's 2024 manifesto, which spoke more vaguely of building on the Online Safety Act and exploring measures for online safety. This raises questions of transparency and whether it's a reactive "big moment" driven by consultation optics rather than rigorous, long-term planning.
Dangers to Children: New Harms from Overprotection.
Ironically, the ban could endanger children more than it protects them. Removing access severs vital support networks. LGBTQ+ youth, for instance, often find community and information online that may be unavailable locally. Marginalized or rural teens lose educational and social opportunities. Isolation from peers' digital spaces can exacerbate loneliness, bullying (which occurs offline too), and delayed social development.
Enforcement introduces privacy risks. Strict age verification—potentially involving facial scans, photo ID, or biometrics—could create a massive database of young users' data, vulnerable to breaches or government overreach. Conspiracy concerns about universal face-scanning aren't baseless in an era of expanding surveillance; they highlight legitimate worries about privacy erosion for an entire generation. Who holds this data? How secure is it? And does it normalize intrusive monitoring that extends beyond childhood?
There's also the "forbidden fruit" effect: tech-savvy children will circumvent bans easily via proxies, shared accounts, or siblings' devices, fostering distrust in authority and teaching evasion rather than responsible use. This underground usage lacks parental guidance, amplifying risks.
Unworkability: Practical Nightmares
Implementation faces insurmountable hurdles:
Enforcement gaps: Platforms must block under-16s, but children lie about ages routinely. VPNs, fake accounts, and international access render borders porous. Australia's experience shows partial compliance at best, with workarounds common.
Collateral damage: Exemptions for YouTube Kids or messaging (WhatsApp, Signal) create inconsistencies. Gaming, livestreaming restrictions, and proposed curfews for 16-17-year-olds add layers of complexity and overreach, burdening families and platforms without clear metrics for success.
Disproportionate impact: It hits lower-income families harder (fewer alternatives for supervision) and stifles innovation in educational or positive tech uses. Tech companies may comply minimally, while innovation in safer designs stalls.
Free speech and development: Blanket bans raise concerns about expression and preparation for digital adulthood. Children need guided exposure to build media literacy, not sudden immersion at 16.
A Better Path Forward
Protecting children online requires nuance, not prohibition. Prioritize:
Platform accountability: Force algorithmic transparency, default safety settings, and rapid removal of illegal content.
Education and literacy: Mandatory school programs on digital citizenship, critical thinking, and mental health awareness.
Targeted enforcement: Invest in policing predators, supporting victims, and parental tools.
Balanced regulation: Age-appropriate design mandates (e.g., time limits, content filters) without total bans.
Social media isn't going away. It's woven into society, offering both perils and profound benefits. Treating children as capable of learning responsibility—while vigorously pursuing bad actors—empowers them far better than isolation. Starmer's ban may score political points with concerned parents, but it risks being remembered as a well-intentioned error that underestimated young people's resilience and overstated government's ability to engineer safety through restriction. True protection builds skills and reforms systems, rather than wishing away the digital world.
PUBLIC INTEREST NOTICE LONDON UK - POSTED BY NEELU BERRY TO FACEBOOK
I have some very sad news received at 1.40pm today, Tuesday, 16 June 2026.
Our dear friend and free human rights advocate, Lee Cant, passed away this morning around 8.45am at Homerton Hospital, after decades of fighting state corruption in Local Government in Hackney and in Central Government.
Lee expressly did not want anyone to know that he had been admitted about a week ago and he did not want any visitors.
He was making enquiries about respite care after discharge, expected in a ofew days.
He was only 73
The circumstances surrounding his declining health over the last 5 years, following keyhole surgery for a hernia operation, causing complications of blood clots spreading into his bladder, (photo taken March 2026 when blood clots were removed),
more recently a weakening heart, are attributable to lack of support for appropriate housing.
It is suspicious that he had a fall on the ward trying to get to the toilet, a few days ago, which was omitted from his nursing and medical notes. I had requested he be provided a zimmer frame. He was being treated for water retention in his chest, ankles and groin.
For over ten years he fought chest infections from black mould from neighbours above his council flat (which he purchased privately the three bed flat in 1987). He was pursued for service charges whilst services he needed were never provided.
The recent forced entry by British Gas, changing his locks and denying him entry to his own home was the latest co-conspirator in his demise, as agent for Hackney Council.
Please pray for his soul to rest in peace.
I welcome anyone to channel Lee and share his thoughts at the present time.
Lee’s 5 year demise is very common for pensioners in the UK.
In September 2016, he was subjected to a brutal forced entry and kidnap from his home by Metropolitan Police, kept in a cell, overnight without charge because he fought the State for an independent judiciary.
Hackney Council hired an external law firm to extort predetermined service charges in the Clerkenwell and Shoreditch County Court and the Upper Tribunal.
The most suspicious part is that the night before his death, an occupational Therapy team had come and cleaned his body as it had never been cleaned before. Even Lee commented on how he had never been so clean. Within hours, he was dead.
He was terrified of how his premature demise would manifest. When I phoned to speak to the nurse looking after him, on 12 June, the nurse said it was another Bank nurse looking after him, and I could not speak to her because she was on another ward, not on Lee’s ward, which was very odd.
The time of his death at 8.45am is very suspicious because it is when the 8 am shift occurs so there are two shifts with a handover between 8 am to 9am so 8.45am is when both shifts are in the office and the bank staff can be anywhere and everywhere.
Anyone can dress up as a nurse or doctor and go to a hospital and do anything to the patients as there is no system of security checks, hence ideal places for “Bank staff” to wander around the wards looking for targeted individuals and whistleblowers.
Routinely in the UK, if the family agree to provide palliative care, they use the code “DNR” on the file, stop water, food and oxygen, use morphine drip with ventilator until fully sedated, call the family and then switch off the ventilator.
In Lee’s case, I got a call from a No Caller ID around 10am, it was a doctor but he wouldn’t tell me how Lee was. He wanted to check he had the correct number for next of kin, which I provided. I got the news after the next of kin had visited to confirm identity. Very dodgy timeline of events especially as he was due for discharge in a few days
They told Lee’s Next of kin that they’re going to take the body for three days to do the post-mortem, which is very odd, because deaths in hospitals do not require post-mortems because the nurses are supposed to monitor the vital signs, transfer to high dependency and support the patient to stay alive.
Added 18/06/26:-
I feel that Lee is trying to give a message that he is not going to rest in peace until he can be sure that everything he has witnessed done wrong to him does not happen to anybody else.
So I am putting my research into the national health service NHS over the last 26 years in the links below:-
Precedents against banks and State executions
Links against State Co-conspirators
(1) 2025 EWCC 43 Cook mandated third party assignees as defendants and named on land registry Title Register
When people hear the words "sexual grooming" or "sexual exploitation," they often think immediately of children. Society rightly condemns those who target children for sexual purposes because children are vulnerable, trusting, and often unable to recognise manipulation until significant harm has already been done.
What is discussed far less frequently is the sexual exploitation and grooming of elderly people. Yet many of the same mechanisms used against children can also be used against vulnerable older adults. While the circumstances differ, the underlying abuse of trust, power, and vulnerability is strikingly similar.
At its heart, grooming is not about age. It is about exploiting vulnerability.
A predator looks for weakness. They look for loneliness, dependency, emotional needs, confusion, isolation, trauma, or a desire for acceptance. The objective is often the same: to gain control, obtain sexual gratification, extract personal information, manipulate behaviour, or establish an unhealthy relationship in which the victim's interests are secondary to the abuser's desires.
Children are vulnerable because they lack life experience and are still developing emotionally and intellectually.
Some elderly people become vulnerable for different reasons. They may suffer from loneliness after losing a spouse. They may experience declining health, reduced social contact, cognitive difficulties, or increasing dependence on others. They may be desperate for companionship and human connection. These factors can make them attractive targets for manipulative individuals.
The cruelty becomes even more disturbing when perpetrators deliberately seek out elderly people who have already suffered abuse earlier in life.
Many survivors of childhood sexual abuse carry emotional wounds for decades. Feelings of shame, self-doubt, fear of rejection, and difficulties establishing healthy boundaries can persist well into old age. Predators understand this. They often seek people who have been traumatised because trauma can make someone easier to manipulate.
This is one of the ugliest aspects of exploitation.
Imagine a child who is abused and groomed, survives that experience, spends decades carrying the psychological consequences, only to find themselves targeted again later in life by another manipulator who recognises those old wounds and sees them as an opportunity.
The predator is not merely exploiting vulnerability. They are exploiting damage that was inflicted by previous predators.
Such behaviour demonstrates a profound lack of empathy. It treats a human being not as a person worthy of dignity and protection, but as an easy target. The perpetrator sees prior victimisation not as a reason for compassion, but as a reason to attack.
The tactics often follow familiar patterns.
The abuser may shower the victim with attention and affection. They may create a sense of exclusivity or special connection. They may gradually introduce sexual topics, test boundaries, pressure the victim into sharing intimate information, request explicit images, or attempt to normalise inappropriate behaviour. They may convince the victim that nobody else understands them or that the relationship must remain secret.
These are classic manipulation techniques, regardless of whether the victim is sixteen or eighty-six.
The emotional damage can be devastating.
Victims often experience humiliation, shame, confusion, anxiety, depression, and a profound loss of trust. Family relationships can be affected. Existing trauma may be reopened. A person who has spent years trying to heal can find themselves reliving old wounds because someone chose to exploit their vulnerabilities for personal gratification.
The idea that exploitation somehow becomes less serious because the victim is elderly is deeply misguided.
Human dignity does not expire with age.
A vulnerable sixty-year-old deserves exactly the same protection from predators as a vulnerable six-year-old. Society should be equally disgusted by those who deliberately seek out vulnerable elderly people for sexual exploitation, particularly when they target individuals with known histories of abuse and trauma.
The measure of a society is not merely how it protects the young. It is also how it protects those who have become vulnerable through age, illness, isolation, or past suffering.
Predators who target children are rightly condemned because they prey upon vulnerability. The same principle applies when predators target the elderly.
In both cases, the abuse is rooted in the same ugly reality: someone choosing to exploit weakness instead of protecting it, choosing manipulation instead of compassion, and viewing another human being not as a person, but as an opportunity.
That is why sexual exploitation and grooming of vulnerable elderly people deserves the same seriousness, attention, and condemnation as any other form of predatory abuse.
