Reynold Macpherson: A Social Media Ban May Solve the Wrong Problem

New Zealand’s proposed ban on social media for people under 16 starts from a serious concern. Children can be harmed online. They can be exposed to bullying, sexual material, grooming, misinformation and extreme content.

Social media can also disrupt sleep, concentration, learning and family life. Some platforms are designed to hold attention for as long as possible. Young people are especially vulnerable to those techniques.

Government therefore has a legitimate duty to act. But that does not mean a ban is necessarily the right answer.

The ethical question is not whether children should be protected. Almost everyone agrees that they should. The real question is what government may reasonably do in the name of protecting them.

That requires several principles to be weighed together.

The first is the duty to prevent harm. Children do not have the same maturity as adults. Society already accepts special rules for alcohol, gambling, driving and other activities that carry risks. There is nothing unusual about giving children stronger protection than adults.

There is also a strong argument that parents cannot carry this burden alone. A family trying to limit social media is competing with powerful global companies. Those companies employ sophisticated systems designed to encourage repeated use. Peer pressure makes the problem harder.

A common legal boundary could therefore help parents. It could also force platforms to take more responsibility for products from which they profit. That is the strongest case for intervention. But good intentions are not enough.

A second ethical principle is proportionality. Government should use no more coercion than is reasonably necessary to achieve a legitimate goal.

A blanket ban applies to every person under 16. Yet children differ greatly in maturity, circumstances and vulnerability.

Some use social media mainly for entertainment. Others use it to keep in touch with family, find communities, obtain information or participate in activities that matter to them.

For some young people, online contact may be especially important because they are isolated by geography, disability or circumstance. A ban therefore removes benefits as well as harms.

Government must show that the benefits of prohibition outweigh those losses.

There is also the question of effectiveness. A law that sounds strong but is easily avoided may achieve little.

Teenagers are often more technically capable than the adults making rules for them. They can use false birth dates, borrowed accounts, virtual private networks and other means of avoiding restrictions.

That creates an ethical problem. A law should not merely express disapproval. It should have a reasonable chance of doing what it promises.

If the law is widely evaded, compliant families carry the burden while others do not. That is unfair.

Worse, government may respond to evasion by demanding stronger systems of identification. This leads to perhaps the most serious concern of all.

To identify who is under 16, platforms may need to establish the age of everyone. That could involve facial estimation, identity documents or digital identification.

The policy would then no longer affect only children. Adults might also have to prove their age before using ordinary online services.

The purpose may be child protection. But the result could be a significant change in the relationship between citizens, technology companies and the state.

Privacy matters because information collected for one purpose can later be used for another. Systems tend to expand once they exist.

A society should therefore be cautious about creating an identification infrastructure affecting millions of people in order to regulate one age group.

There is another problem. A ban may remove children from mainstream platforms without removing the dangers of the internet.

Young people may move to less regulated services. They may use anonymous sites. They may become harder for parents to supervise.

Some may also be less willing to seek help after encountering harmful material because they were not supposed to be online in the first place.

A policy intended to make children safer could therefore create new risks. This is why regulation should focus more closely on the source of the harm.

The problem is not simply that children have access to social media. The problem is also what platforms do once children are there.

Governments could regulate addictive design, algorithmic promotion, harmful content, commercial targeting and data collection. They could require strong default protections for minors. They could impose meaningful duties on companies that profit from young users. They could give parents better tools.

They could also improve digital education so that young people gradually learn how to manage online risks rather than simply being excluded until their sixteenth birthday. None of these measures is perfect. Neither is a ban.

The choice is therefore not between doing nothing and prohibiting social media. There is a wide range of possible interventions between those extremes. The ethical test should be demanding.

· Does the policy reduce harm?

· Is it proportionate?

· Does it protect privacy?

· Does it respect the developing autonomy of young people?

· Does it place responsibility on the companies creating the risks?

· Will it work in practice?

· And could the same benefits be achieved with fewer restrictions?

Child safety is an important public duty. But child safety alone cannot justify every measure proposed in its name.

A good policy must protect children without creating unnecessary harms for children, families and society as a whole. That is the standard a social media ban should have to meet.

*Reynold Macpherson is a retired professor, former CEO and Rotorua Lakes councillor who writes about ethics, governance, educative leadership and public policy. He can be contacted at reynold@reynoldmacpherson.ac.nz