Media Storm - Should the UK ban social media for under 16s?

Episode Date: February 12, 2026

Care about independent and ethical news? Support Media Storm on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! In December, Australia enforced a world-first, nationwide ban banning children under 16 from holding accounts on major social media platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X, and YouTube. And now, the UK could be following suit.  But are concerns over "child safety" really behind the ban, or is this a smokescreen for state surveillance and control of youth dissent?  For many teenagers, social media is where they first encounter global news, social justice movements, and political debate - especially if they don’t have access to formal education or traditional news environments. Is the social media ban a blessing for traditional media gatekeepers?  Will it even work, or will the digital native generation simply find a way around it? Shouldn't we be regulating content, not children? Will the government ever stand up to Big Tech? And is the legacy media completely out of touch with young people?  To discuss all these questions and more we're joined by two Gen Z's with big voices. Fiona Lali is the youth organiser for the Revolutionary Communist Party, delivering political analysis and explainers to hundreds of thousands of people across her social media platforms. Tamara Himani is journalist and analyst reporting on politics in the US and the Middle East for Middle East Eye, an outlet built on social media.  The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@mathildamall⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠) and Helena Wadia (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@helenawadia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠)  The music is by⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @soundofsamfire⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok ⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Helena. Yes, Matilda. When you were, when did you first get, actually, when did you first get social media? Oh, it's hard to remember, honestly, but I think, I'm going to say around like 14, 15. That's when I got Bebo. Man, I was the queen of Bebo. Were you? Yeah.

If only Bebo had lived on, you'd be like the number one influence in the world. I know, honestly. I had, you know, you could like change your pages wallpaper. Mine was like so emo. It's like a dark, purple and black. And also, do you remember about Bebo you could rank your friends? Babe, I was actually too young for Bebo. Oh, stop it. You're like one and a half years younger than me. Okay, what was your, what was your first experience of social media? I got on Facebook. I think I was like 11 or 12. Whoa. Well, I think Facebook was only allowed when you were. were 13. And unless I'm remembering wrong, but I know I was under the age limit and I was like sneaking on so I thought

it was quite cool. Okay, so at that age, 13, 14, 15. Like, what was social media to you? Would you have preferred if you didn't have it? I don't think it had a negative influence. I would say net net it was positive.

We would use it to join really stupid Facebook groups. It was kind of like a sense of community, especially at school, almost like against the teachers. I would say there were obviously some negative things. Obviously anybody could put up a photo of you. But by and large, I would say we thought it was funny.

We thought it was great. And we just all had a good time on it. Yeah, I mean, I thought it was fun, kind of rebellious, but not super dangerous. In fact, the biggest danger I felt from social media was just from each other. We had like a big cyberbullying scandal between our year group and the below year group and we were all summoned. Right. I also remember feeling very conscious of how many likes, like your profile picture would get or how many people would write on your wall on your birthday or Facebook wall. It was a very public popularity forum in that way.

That is true. That is true. I refer you back to rating your friends on Bebo by order of how much you likes them. Yes. I'm swept over that. That's wild. Yeah. Were you liked? Yes, I told you I was Queen of Bebo. Okay, so look, the reason that we are discussing this is obviously because the UK, like other countries around the world, is actively considering a ban on social media access on children, generally children under 16.

This follows an overwhelming House of Lords vote here in the UK to amend the children's well-being and schools bill. The proposal aims to introduce strict age verification and it mirrors recent legislation in Australia. Now, social media today is very different from when it was Bebo and Bubble Trouble. We had a bit of cyberbullying, as you said, Matilda. But we didn't really have all the politics. That is true. I didn't really think about the politics. But today, I mean, even as an adult, I mostly use my social media platforms for politics or my profession, which is politics.

Same, and that's invaluable. That's how we connect with the world, how we break away from media gatekeepers for all the reasons we discuss on this show every single week. Okay, but also, check your screen time. I've actually done very well to get my screen time down pretty low. I'm actually quite scared of looking at my screen. How do I look at my screen time?

Right, so you go to settings. Okay, brief pause while we find our screen time. Is it like apps and websites? site activity. Turn on. Oh, mine's not turned on. Oh, you haven't even got it on. Oh, I guess I just don't like giving Apple my data. Yeah. I've got no, I've got zero screen time. Okay. I'm healed. I'm great. Well, my daily screen time used to be an average of about six hours and I've got it down to two hours. Two hours screen time a day. That's good. Yeah. The primary reason that I know I wouldn't want my kids on social media is screen time, actually.

I think about the impact it has on the brain, the impact it has on attention span. I see it in like the young kids in my family once they get a screen in front of them. The natural world stops being interesting. I agree. But I feel like that should be fixed, not just banned. Counterpoint. We have substance bans on young people for alcohol. for tobacco betting, online betting.

That's not a substance ban, but I think we'd probably agree that there should be an age limit on that. And there is a tragic backdrop to the campaigning for title regulation of teen and child use of social media. Just one very relevant example is the story of Molly Rose.

In 2017, 14-year-old Molly Rose died by suicide, an inquiry into her death found that she had had online content depicting suicide algorithmically pushed at her, including content that romanticised acts of self-harm. The police inquiry concluded, quote, it is likely that the material viewed by Molly, already suffering with a depressive illness and vulnerable due to her age,

contributed to her death in a more than minimal way. Also, the public overwhelmingly support the idea of a ban. A you-gov poll in December found that 74% of Brits either strongly or somewhat support the ban compared to 19% who strongly or somewhat opposed it. And even young people vote in favour of the ban, right? Half of 16 to 24-year-olds wish that they'd spent less time on their phones and three-quarters want tougher regulation to protect young people from social media. That's from recent polling for the think tank, the New Britain Project.

When teenagers themselves are saying that they'd keep their own future children away, that really makes me think. Listen, I understand why the polling shows that. When I think about this ban on a surface level, I think, yeah, great, get the under-16s away from all that harmful, horrible content online. Because, yeah, I ask myself what I'd want for my kid. I would want a world where connection can be formed IRL. But if you think about it, funding to youth services has been cut.

by almost 80% since 2010. Local theatre groups, music groups, youth clubs all closed down. I think it's very easy to blame children for getting addicted to something which was designed to be addictive. But where's the alternative? Let's offer these kids an alternative. There is so much more to this ban than meets the eye. And I think that's what we need to talk about today. that social media can bring isolation, danger and mental health issues is not disputed, but is a blanket ban the way to go? To be fair, my Catholic education and abstinence

didn't work out too well. Exactly. And listen to this, Molly Rose's dad, and the foundation in her name, as you said, have been at the forefront of pushing for stricter social media regulations. So you would think they're definitely going to be in favour of this proposal to ban social media for under 16.

But guess what? They're not. Nor are the NSPCC and Childnet who have all warned that blanket bans could create a false sense of security, pushing young people and the threats to those young people into less regulated parts of the internet rather than actually protecting them. And here's the thing, you mentioned cigarettes, you mentioned alcohol, but social media isn't inherently harmful like those things. It can be harmful because of the lack of regular. But shouldn't we be regulating the content, not the people using it? And social media can be unbelievably powerful. And to understand just how powerful, we need to look at the stories that the media misses,

and they're from the global south. Story time. Let me take you back to July 24. In Bangladesh, university students began protesting. They were unhappy about job opportunities and widening unemployment. Plus, social media in Bangladesh had been dominated by discussions about corruption allegations against some of the then Prime Minister's former top officials. As the protesting expanded, the then Prime Minister, Sheikh Khashina, repeatedly cut off internet access in the country.

She issued an open order to use lethal weapons on students protesting. Over 300 people were killed in the unrest. It was dubbed a massacre. Cutting off the internet access did not quell the protests. It only fuelled them. Students became even angrier that the place where they expressed and organised themselves, social media, was taken away from them. And when it came back, the movement was even bigger.

It ultimately led to the Prime Minister fleeing to India and the government being toppled. And there are other places with similar stories, Togo, Madagascar, Morocco, Kenya. But I want to focus on Nepal quickly because this is a good example. of a revolution done Gen Z style. In September 2025, large-scale anti-corruption protests and demonstrations took place across Nepal, predominantly organised by Gen Z students and young citizens. They were pissed off about inequality, concerned about the economy, and also very angry about what they were seeing online.

There was a lot on social media about so-called nepo babies. But in this case, the nepo babies were not children of actors or singers, but the children of politicians who Genzi students felt were flaunting their lives on social media, promoting extravagance and affluence, while so many people had so very little. Social media was the trigger, but it was also the catalyst, because just as the spotlights on the lavish lifestyles of politicians' children had taken off on social media, the government banned 26 social media platforms. They said it was because these platforms like Facebook, YouTube,

and Snapchat had failed to comply with new government rules. But critics allege the shutdown was simply because the truth about corruption was trending. And Gen Z did not take it lying down. The parliament building in Kathmandu went up in flames. People were doing TikTok dances outside of it. Discord and Instagram channels were used as central organization tools. And once again, they toppled the government. The Prime Minister resigned.

These movements spurred by social media have been so vigorous. They have brought about serious political change, change that some people have struggled to make over years. There is something to be said about the power of young people and a unified message on social media. Interesting. Yeah. I hadn't really contemplated the political dimension to this debate. And I think that's because it's not really been part of,

the debate. The language of the bill and the coverage of the bill is very focused on the mental health and safety aspect. And I think there's a danger that this part of the conversation, the risk of cutting young people off from the main public political forum of the day, a risk that that goes uninterrogated. So look, maybe lived experience will change my mind on this one. Let's see. First, a quick bit of context on the ban. In December, Australia enforced a world-first nationwide ban prohibiting children under 16 from holding accounts on major social media platforms. This includes Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X and YouTube. The legislation places the onus on tech companies to take reasonable steps to restrict access, with penalties of

up to 49.5 million Australian dollars for non-compliance. In the first days of the ban, the Prime Minister said that nearly five million accounts were deactivated, removed or restricted. Of course, it's unknown how many youth social media accounts that is out of. Spain intends to ban social media for under 16s. Denmark plans to ban under 15s. French lawmakers just approved a ban in January. Norway is proposing a similar age limit to Denmark. Singapore, Indonesia, Italy, Greece and Brazil are studying the Australian model and the UK is in the process of putting this amendment through Parliament. Change is in the works. But is it the right? change. Could the UK follow Australia's lead and ban social media? And as teenagers look for ways

to get around it? A ban takes the odus away from the platforms doing something about the problems that they have been. We need to better protect children from social media. All options are on the table. Welcome to Media Storm, the news podcast that starts with the people who were normally asked last. I'm Helena Wadia. And I'm Matilda Malinson. This week's Media. Storm. Should social media be banned for teens? Welcome to the Media Storm Studio. Our first guest is the youth organizer for the Revolutionary Communist Party. In the 2024 general election, she campaigned as an independent candidate.

She delivers political analysis and explainers to hundreds of thousands of people across her social media platforms. Welcome to the Media Storm studio, Fiona Lally. Thank you and I'm happy to be here. Our second guest is my amazing and intimidatingly young colleague. She's a journalist and analyst reporting on politics in the US and Middle East for an outlet largely built on social media, Middle East Eye, whose coverage of the genocide in Gaza particularly drew in a global audience in the millions.

Welcome to Media Storm Tamara Himani. Thank you guys so much for having me. Now, the debate about banning social media for under 16s is exploding in our parliament, and in our media, the dominant framing has been around mental health and safety, issues like addictiveness, exposure to harmful content and cyberbullying. Here's a question for both of you. If, for the moment, we focus purely on the parameters of this mainstream debate, mental health and online safety, how do you feel about banning under 16s from social media?

Say what is really driving the mental health crisis amongst young people, which is a serious one, isn't social media in the abstract. It's what they experience in their day-to-day life. When you talk to young people about what they're feeling, in particular anxiety, that is related to fear over their future. And the horrors that they're seeing and experiencing, even this feeling of social into disintegration, misogyny, that exists in the real world and has existed for a long time.

Then you have social media, which is run by traffic, where literally algorithms are designed to get reactions out of people. Often horrible things get reactions out of people. There's so much horror in reality. So I think when we end up blaming social media for the mental health crisis, it's actually an easy get-out from solving the problems in society. I want to jump in with some devil's advocacy, which is not something I ever do.

But tomorrow, will you just tell us what you think quickly first? I maybe have a more nostalgic or rosy-eyed view of social media. My question would be, well, how am I going to watch my interesting YouTube videos? But I realize that also, you know, you've had a real degradation of the quality of these platforms, a real loosening of restrictions, you've had the advent of AI. This debate is probably a lot more warranted now than it would have been 10 years ago. Yeah, so I said I was going to jump in with devil's advocacy. I don't really believe in devil's advocacy.

And so if I'm honest, it's because I actually do instinctively think I want some sort of enforced reduction, particularly for young people. And I suppose how I think about it is, look, I know that a ban, bans are very rarely effective. We have, whether it's the episode that we've done about drugs, we talk about harm reduction as something that's much more effective than bans and criminalization. but a young mind, like a young body, needs different substance exposure. So I don't believe that it would be right to criminalise alcohol or tobacco. And frankly, I believe in decriminalisation of drugs. But I do think that there should be an age limit on that. For me, it's probably mostly about like screen time and the amount of time you're on a screen

and how that can start brain development and how it's become so hard to find anything else entertaining if you have become used to the entertainment algorithm. Yeah. So those are my slightly untidy thoughts. Fiona, do you have anything to push back on? Again, it's related to the ownership of the platforms itself. I would say you can't control what you don't own, right? What we're fearful about is young people being exposed to horrific things,

whether it's related to body image, whether it's related to dangerous ideas. That's, I think, the central question. Who is allowing this content on? Elon Musk doesn't care if Grok is suddenly allowing the sexualization of literal children on Twitter or on X, because he's running a private company. He's trying to make profit. He wants to drive traffic.

So rather than try and find, as you kind of admitted, probably arbitrary ways to parcel things off and stop people accessing these things. The question is who owns the platforms in the first place? And actually, we have to really be honest that teenagers aren't idiots. They're generally more digitally savvy than the generation policing them. And an example of this is that there have already been plenty of workarounds. For example, the age verification tools that were introduced after the Online Safety Act, all that really happened is that they massively increase the use of VPNs.

Teenagers are going to find different ways. to get online. Let's get onto the main part of this discussion because how I feel is based largely off of this topical debate I've been seeing in the mainstream, which is about mental health, which is about safety. But Helena, as you pointed out to me, there is actually a whole other side to this discussion. Exactly. This brings us really onto the question of what's motivating politicians and whether it's actually evidence-based policymaking. Now, one of the pitfalls of our short term voting system is that it rewards populists trying to get into power, not skilled policymakers. Here at MediaStorm, we think the clickbait media is largely to blame because it

gives headlines to whoever can rage bait and points score the best rather than those who actually get results. Seeing the social media debate play out in our government now, I worry that that's what's happening. For context, although most Labour MPs want better regulation for young people on social media, Kirstama hesitated about an actual ban. All that did is leave Kemi Badenock, head of the Tory opposition, to take advantage of an open goal. Badek, by the way, argued against protections in the Online Safety Act due to free speech concerns, but with the social media ban, she jumped on the opportunity to take Tory credit for something that polls very well with the public and pushed to introduce the ban as an amendment to another law going through the House of Lords.

It's hard to know what's sincere and what's just for spectacle. Fiona, how do you feel about the party politics of this all? Is this ban about outcomes or optics? I would say the ban is definitely about optics for all of the political parties. From the point of view of the Labour government, it doesn't cost them anything if they suddenly decide to ban social media and then they can pretend that they're actually doing it in the interest of mental health or in the interest.

interests of safety. When actually, if they cared about mental health, they could fund the services that are crumbling all around young people that is driving anxiety, that is driving depression. And then on the other end of the political spectrum, well, they're actually all the same, but you might have reform who would be opposed to the ban because they want to court the big tech companies and they wouldn't say, well, we're all in favor of free speech. All of these people in one way or another are interested in managing the status quo, their own cinema. interest and their own cynical means. None of it is actually about mental health and safety. Just to jump in, although I understand the optics of looking as though you're doing something and

Stormer has been very keen to do that because of, you know, his ongoing political crises, but this is something that's being debated seriously in countries outside the UK. Both Spain and Greece have been talking very seriously about implementing this kind of ban. And, you know, Spain's Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez is not really. someone, I'd say, who's very politically desperate at the moment. So, I mean, I think we can look at the ways in which certain political actors are weaponizing this debate to give themselves the appearance of political efficacy, while also recognizing that this is a serious debate for many European policymakers across the continent, many of whom feel, you know what, they've tried to regulate big tech.

EU has gone very far in doing that, the Digital Services Act, Data Protection Regulation. Trump has come in and basically said deregulate, deregulate, deregulate, and push them to roll back a lot of these protections. So these guys may feel, you know what, like you've given us no choice. You want these to be deregulated? Fine, but in their current form, we are then not going to allow for under 16s to access these apps because in the deregulated form that you want them, they're simply not safe for under 16's use. I mean, you make a very good point tomorrow. And the response, I think, that's been coming from particularly teenagers is that instead of punishing the tech companies, you're punishing us. And the core problem that I hear in the scenario you just painted Tamara is

the unaccountable power of these tech companies. Wealthiest people in the world or the people who really control the means of communication. Now they used to be governments. Now they're tech giants. And the multinational framework of the company means they're really, really hard to regulate within national law. So is this, do we just have to admit that this is a really imperfect fix to the core problem that these tech companies have become unregulatable? There's got to be a better word for that. I think it's also a question of political will. Like the EU was really looked to as the standard setter for tech regulation throughout the 2010s, right? And they had some really landmark policies passed, even in the early 2020.

And we know that some of that efforts are still going on, you know. They find X late last year over transparency over blue tick accounts. They're investigating GROC over sexualized deepfakes, as someone mentioned. They're investigating TikTok over its addictive algorithm. It shows that when governments do want to do something about it, they will, right? And they'll take it far. You know, he was monitored everything from Holocaust denial to data extraction on these platforms. I don't think that's the issue.

I think when you have the US coming in saying deregulate, stop bullying American companies, will fight back and will slap these tariffs on you if you don't, then you have a political will problem. And that's why the EU's latest package, the digital omnibus package, actually rolls back a lot of the more aggressive protections and obligations they would have put on these companies. And I think, you know, this also goes back partly to what Fiona was saying. you know, the EU also feels a lot of pressure to be competitive. It's caught between very big American and Chinese tech companies.

And so for that reason, there's been a real pressure to deregulate, remain competitive, stop swaddling industries with all these, you know, hindrances and protections. You know, we can't afford to lose the AI race or the digital race against all these big companies. And so we have to do what must be done. So I think, you know, part of it is obviously the multinational, as you described and VPNs and so on and so forth. But a lot of it is also political will. And I think, unfortunately, the progress and the reputation that Europe developed for itself

over the past 10, 15 years in the tech space is now being rapidly undermined in the effort to keep up with and appease a much more powerful government across the Atlantic and also across the Pacific. And it's not just the political. will that may be lacking. There's also the corporate will, which is essential here. I mean, these companies will be the first to go on programs about this and say, we care about children's well-being and social health.

Actually, in my first ever job at the FT, I made a video about social media and mental health because I was, you know, catering to the youth audiences. Mehta was like falling over itself to come on and talk to me because they have whole PR teams dedicated to articulating how much they care about young people's mental health. But you know, you mentioned Infinite Scroll, right? That's being investigated. The inventor of Infinite Scroll says he wish he'd never invented it. It's just one line of code. Meta could easily change it if they want it to. Fiona, do you think we can ever believe that these corporations will genuinely have the will to put children's mental well-being

before their own profits? Yeah, the short answer is no. And that applies to the question of political will from governments all over the world who will bend to whatever it is big business requires them to do. And I think it's so important when we talk about safety and mental health and children that we don't allow the discussion to be parceled off away from the generalised problems that exist in society and in the system. I remember when there was so much panic about Andrew Tate, for example, in Britain. And I think in school, They sent out letters, you know, trying to warn people about Andrew Tate, which on the surface is a good thing. We want to warn people against horrific ideas.

But in terms of the objectification of women, the sexualization of women, you watch any James Bond film you like, you'll be hot. I remember the first James Bond film I ever watched. I was gobsmacked at what was being said. And those ideas have always been promoted. And so I think that, yeah, we want to blame the tech bosses absolutely. But this applies to the whole of the mainstream media, all of our cultural institutions. And that is also driven by by profit. So I think, yeah, we need to look at why our governments are completely subordinate to the interests of big business as a whole.

I want to move the conversation to something that I feel has been strikingly absent from the mainstream media debate on this topic. And that's the political dimension of social media. We talk about mental health and safety, and we've spoken about big tech bosses, but we talk much less about how social media politically educates young people. For many teenagers, it's where they first encounter global news, social justice movements and political debate, especially if they don't have access to formal education or traditional news environments. Fiona, how important is social media as an entry point to politics,

for young people. Yeah, social media has politicized, had helped politicize a whole generation, right? We have a generation who've also grown up and spent a lot of time online during the pandemic. And after that, had seen many horrific things. If you're 18 years old today, you've had the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the genocide in Gaza, climate catastrophe all over the world. You know, one side of social media is this atomization, the doom scrolling. but also it can show you that you're not alone in what you're thinking and you're not alone in what you're feeling. And that's where the political side to it is so important to translate that feeling of despair and anger at the world into you can do something about it. When people organize how to go to protests, what you should do at a protest, what to wear, what not to wear,

all of this kind of stuff. But I do want to add a really important caveat, which is that mass movements have existed before social media as well, including young people being at the forefront of them. So I think social media is just this concentrated expression. It can just speed up the process. It can accelerate it, which is a powerful thing that we should use. But the main thing being, this is a real process that already exists in the real world. And Tamara, as a journalist who relies on social media for reach, how do you feel about taking under 16s off these platforms. I mean, is your content inappropriate for them or something that they

would be very interested in? I mean, I think my content, it's more about my style of content, which is the explainer that I think young people find very helpful. So we know that a majority of young people get their news from social media. 52% of 12 to 15 year olds say that that news is trustworthy that they get on social media. When you have young people who are, already feel so excluded from political conversation, who already feel as though news outlets aren't addressing them. I think there is a real value in having someone say, I'm going to break this down for you in a couple minutes, and I'm going to inject all the context you need into this situation. We live in a news heavy, but context starved time, right? Everyone's publishing. Everyone's

talking. We live with a U.S. president who is very good at churning out about five to ten different headlines every day, right? So the demand for context for understanding has not only grown, but it's also vital, right? Because if people don't understand things, they just won't engage with it anymore. If you have people on social media or outlets on social media with whom they can develop that kind of relationship, it's not only useful for the young person as an entryway into politics, but also reminds those involved in politics that they actually need to communicate their cases more clearly and more intelligibly to the population, right? Why did Trump do so well? Because he could talk to people in a way that no Democrat could. So I think it's actually vital

to the survival of democratic politics and the engagement of young people in that politics, that we have areas where they can join that conversation and be part of. of that dialogue without feeling overwhelmed and intimidated by it. When I read about this Under 16 social media ban and a lot of the politicians who wanted it, I couldn't help thinking like, does this go hand in hand with the same politicians who don't want to give young people the vote? Can anyone expand on that little kernel of a thought? Yeah, I think this is so important because it's clear that all over the world, I think the ruling class are very scared of the mood in young people and the politicization that is being experienced.

I saw something the other day, which was the CEO of TikTok of the American side of TikTok, bragging about banning certain pro-Palestine terms or creators or content, right? And it's true that a lot of them have spoken about how, oh, well, young people support Palestine just because of what they've seen on social media. and they're kind of scared of this thing that has been growing in and amongst young people for a while. They're kind of half right. It's related to this point about how movements can exist outside of social media anyway. I've been thinking about the movement against the Vietnam War in the US, for example,

wasn't driven by social media. It was actually driven by people seeing war on the mainstream media and then thinking, well, why are we a part of this? Parsling off just the social media part of it isn't what's going to sort of. solve the hatred that young people have against their own governments. A lot of the meme culture online is kind of this cynicism at all politicians, at all politics, at any idea of a future or I can't afford this, so I will go and get avocado on toast. It's this kind of nihilism that people feel almost.

And actually liking a tweet is not political activism. That's great, but let's move outside of our phones. But that example you bring in with war, That's where the dial moves in the debate for me when it comes to mainstream media coverage of war because we live in countries with relatively free press. We don't think of our press as propaganda. But when it gets geopolitical, it does get propagandist. And we've seen that with the Gaza war. Wherever you're listening from, most of our listeners are US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, you're part of that Anglo-Saxon world, that Anglo-Saxon media perpetuates a very specific worldview. And with the genocide in Gaza, the mainstream media has relentlessly tried to fit it into this rigid framework of the Western worldview. And if people, if teenagers today were only allowed to rely on the mainstream media when reading about what was happening in Gaza, I would have a real issue with that because what we were seeing up until, you know, tens of thousands of children had undeniably been

slaughtered was apologism for genocide. Were IDF spokespeople whose lies had been proven again, and again, those same people are still coming on the platforms, the statistics of the death toll in the mainstream media were consistently framed as being from the Hamas-led Health Ministry as a way of undermining their ferocity. Of course, now Israel has accepted the Hamas-led health ministry statistics as facts. And so that gives me real cause to question whether it's okay for under 16s to have all of their information about the world coming from the mainstream outlets coming from their curriculum. Tamara, you must have thoughts on this.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of my friends, I think when the war broke out, I think one of the things I was shocked by was when you live in a certain world, you assume that everyone has the same context as you, right? And everyone lives from the same worldview as you. And I remember the war broke out. And I was like one of the only Arabs in my like group of friends in my university college. And I remember being like, well, don't you guys get like this in front of. they're like, no, this is my feed. These are the news outlets. Like, I'm not getting the same

information you are when you speak about things. Sometimes that's the first time I'd heard them. And that was when I was like, oh, oh my goodness. And like you said, you know, this, this isn't just come from our perception of things. This is media watchdogs, a center for media monitoring. So many that have done this work and said, you know, these are the amount of times an Israeli perspective was shared compared with a Palestinian perspective. These were how casualties were talked about here versus here. BBC, Sky, a lot of broadcast TV. They have the data to prove that these two perspectives were discussed differently. It's kind of been a case of the tail wagging the dog where because social media provided such a powerful antidote to what people were seeing, legacy media

kind of realized, oh shit, like we actually need to catch up, right? Because anything that a guy, a military spokesman would come on and CNN and say, you would have people on the ground in Gaza physically showing you something different. And so for the first time, people were trusting strangers who they didn't know from Adam, who maybe they didn't even speak the same language over CNN, New York Times, outlets that they trusted for their entire lives. So yeah, I think Gaza was definitely the trigger for that. But, you know, under Trump and the concentration of a lot of these outlets into larger conglomerates, the pressure on their coverage, the lawsuits. I think this demand for a more accountable media environment will only grow.

Yeah, really what both of you have highlighted so well is that this is a broader issue of media gatekeeping. Mainstream outlets are, as we've said, by and large, owned by a handful of billionaires, and social media has become a place where marginalized voices and younger journalists can speak out without that gatekeeping. From this perspective, the social media ban is a blessing for traditional media gatekeepers and strengthens their competitive advantage over young minds. Fiona, I'd love to know from your perspective, how out of touch do you feel the legacy media is with Gen Z's? The legacy media is completely out of touch with the mood and the rage that

exists in young people, Palestine became a lightning rod for all accumulated anger. The idea that they are lying to us. And now with the Epstein files, the role of all of these people being there together, I mean, it's just, it's confirming, I think, a gut instinct that people have felt for a long time. And so I think there's a lack of faith in the media. And then that applies to other institutions, whether it's the police, whether it's the monarchy, all of the key institutions. All of the key institutions of the state of, I would say, of capitalist society, are viewed as corrupt and rotten. And so if they tried to implement a social media ban in this context, it will enrage people even more. So, yeah, I would say that they're completely out of touch,

but it's not just because it's a bunch of like old people who are running it. It's to do with the entire world that they operate in. And more specifically, the class that they come from, in society. They're trying to promote certain interests. So I don't think you could just like put a few young people in these companies and it would transform the situation. It's to do with who owns them. This question of ownership is the driving, the driving thing for me. The other thing which we've touched on is the more philosophical question about democracy and at what age we give children civic recognition and civic responsibility. Helena, you touched on it with the vote. We've mentioned that politicians tend to be quite negligent of young

voter interests. This is actually a serious issue in our democratic society. If we think about student fees, university fees. You know, I came in like a year after the uni fees were tripled. It was just an absurd demonstration of how quick politicians are to dismiss young voters. And that is because they don't see them as having much civic power. They're generally either not allowed to vote or seen as not likely to turn up for the vote. And social media has ruptured that. It has changed the power balance in our voter demographic. And that is one of the reasons we've seen this wave of Gen Z protests sweeping the globe.

Yeah, the term Gen Z protests has been used to describe this wave of youth-led movements against autocratic governments in the past few years. from Bangladesh to Sri Lanka, Kenya, Nepal and Iran. These protests have relied heavily on social media for mobilisation. They've gone viral with memes and depended on citizen journalism to hold repressive security forces to account. In equal reflection of the political power of social media, these governments have often responded by banning platforms, throttling internet access or blocking messaging apps.

Tamara, is there a risk that the language of charge of charge? safety, which we're seeing from the UK government, could overlap with the tactics governments already used to control youth dissent. I mean, as you mentioned, you know, the younger generations are those who feel most disenfranchised within democratic systems. When they're polled in democratic societies, they are the most cynical of the political process, the most likely to believe that political violence and more militant means of political participation are justified. hence why they've been behind so many of these global protests that you've noted, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and so on. I think from the perspective of these authoritarian governments, an authoritarian government wants you to feel

alone in your frustration and your anger. It wants to make you think that you are the only person who feels the way that you do so that you think resistance is not worth it because no one else will join me, because I feel utterly alone, right? That is the most useful emotion for them. So from And from that perspective, you know, being able to clamp down on social media is the best gift. And we know how much social media has played a role in the Arab Spring, for example, when people were using apps like Facebook, for example, to coordinate protests in Egypt and in Syria, right? Because the counterbalance to that sense of isolation that one feels under an autocratic government is the sense of, oh, no, there are actually other people like me.

That's an electric feeling. And so it's no wonder that authoritarian governments so routinely use internet blackouts to tell protesters, it's actually not worth coming out because you're alone. And no one's coming out with you and no one's coming to help you. So I think definitely there is a risk that these broad mandates like child safety, you know, public decency, counterterrorism, sensitive information. A lot of these mandates allow these governments to divide and isolate. and suppress these protests. I just want to add one thing to your point about isolation and community because it feeds back into the original debate we were having about mental health.

There are some groups that are always marginalized in society. LGBT groups, for example, have managed to develop incredibly powerful and welcoming communities on social media. And when you take that away, that can have a detrimental mental health effect on teens and particularly on those marginal. groups. So in Australia, one month into the ban, data shows that one in ten calls two child line are to do with the social media ban. And this is particularly the case with the LGBT young teens who've lost vital support communities. Actually, one of our listeners wrote to us

when we posted that we're doing this episode. And she said, as a parent of a queer autistic teen, the prospect of the ban terrifies me. So I just think that's worth adding to that discussion. No, I'd agree 100%. You know, I think if you're growing up in that community, it can be quite terrifying to go through it alone, especially if you live in, you know, the Gulf States or the Arab world. If you don't have friends who are going through the same thing as you, you can feel completely alone. And I think, you know, the website queering the map, which used to be on all over social media where, you know, people drop their pin from wherever they are and talk about their, you know, personal queer love stories was like really a sign of hope for a lot. of people to be able to go through those and read from all these people all over the world who were just like them, right? It's like it's the same thing, you know, like when you read poetry,

when you're the idea that you're going online and you think you're absolutely alone in your feelings and then you go and you find that there are scores of people who are going through the exact same thing that you are. Like that's beautiful, right? And I think like you said, you know, obviously there are good and bad communities on these platforms, but for these marginalized communities, to feel that there are some people like you at a time where you perhaps feel the most self-loathing or the most self-disbelief or a complete lack of acceptance from your surrounding community is so, so important. And I know so many people from, you know, having lived in Bahrain, having lived in Qatar, in the UAE, so many people for whom, without that, they probably wouldn't have been able to

get to high school, right? That would have been a completely different. experience for them and a much lonelier one. I have another reading about cloaking something in the guise of child safety. And I wonder if this might be too cynical a reading. But potentially could this under 16 social media ban be about mass surveillance, i.e. if everybody has to put in their photo ID or their face ID to prove they're not under 18, then suddenly the government and the people who run these platforms have a lot of data. Is that too cynical, Fiona?

No, I don't think that's cynical. I think the government will use any opportunity it can. I don't think they're always as strategic in terms of how they go through things, but that is an amazing opportunity for them to gain, yeah, greater surveillance, gain greater access over knowledge and information and things. that they might need in a politically tumultuous time. Can I just jump on that point about surveillance and IDs? There's a flip side to that, which I came across, again,

when I was doing that little video for the Financial Times many, many years ago, I interviewed Alan de Botton. I don't know if anyone knows he's a philosopher. That's so cool. The School of Life. Yeah, I know. I was so excited. He had a solution to the mental health social media crisis, and that was everyone online needs to have a social media crisis.

verified identity. He said if everyone who has an account on these platforms actually has a verified identity, then they will start behaving like we do when we're face to face and we're accountable for our words. He was really talking about hate speech and like trolling. Anonymity is a very, very dangerous thing for like decency and morality. And I remember when he said this, I pushed back because I was like, the thing is if everyone has to provide ID, what are people in repressive regimes trying to organize revolution going to do? What are stateless people and refugees going to do, people who don't necessarily have easy access to IDs. And he was like, yeah, no, there need to be systems that mean that there's allowances,

but by and large, everyone should be accountable for what they do and say online. And that brings me, I suppose, to my final question on this topic of whether we should be defending youth social media because of the political power it holds. And that's the political danger that it also holds. Disinformation is rampant on social media. Algorithmic echo chambers pull people to the extreme. Tech moguls profit off an information ecosystem that sows the seeds of chaos and we are seeing them win that war in our society. We're seeing our social fabric stretched to the point of breaking from polarization. And this is particularly true with like young boys online. Young male misogyny is massively on the rise. Many boys today are more anti-feminist than their

grandfathers. We at Media Storm, we did an investigation into far-right radicalisation speaking to those boys, speaking to recruiters. I did an interview with one guy who'd been recruited online as a teenager and also his mum. She said something that really stayed with me about when he was just going up to his room and locking himself in his room, she thought, okay, like he's being antisocial and it's concerning but at least he's not getting himself into trouble. At least he's not out on the street, getting himself into fights. And I know where he is and he's safe. And then she said, that's not true today.

There is nowhere more dangerous for your boy to be than shut alone in his room. And so I wonder, how does that sit with the theory that we should let our youth get their political education from the wild World Wide Web tomorrow? I just want to push back on the idea that social media is uniquely dangerous. So I often think about the radio. I think of Franklin D. Roosevelt's fireside chats, right? During the Great Depression in America, the president would sit down. And well, I guess he kind of did the first explainers, right? He would sit down and explain this is what we're going to do with the banks.

This is the policies that we're going to enroll next. This is what's happening, you know? And he had, at his peak, 50 to 60 million Americans. That was nearly half of the population at the time listening to these conversations. At the same time, in the 1930s, another very popular radio host was Reverend Charles Coughlin. He had about 30 million weekly listeners. He was extremely sympathetic to Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. And he was kind of the real pioneer of this kind of America first extremist kind of, you know,

lending support to these far-right governments, right? They were both produced by radio. The reason that FDR won the battle of ideas, as it were, and Coughlin didn't, at least up until now, is because his narrative was better, his argument was better, right? These platforms have always had two sides. They've always had the capacity for charisma to be used either for good or for bad, right? But it's about how those fall into a broader landscape, right? So I think what the mom is saying, which I would agree with, social media shouldn't be a kid's only upbringing. I don't think anyone, like, would agree with that, you know? Like my younger brother, for example, my brother is 16.

He lives in the UAE. He's around a lot of immature kids with a lot of attitudes. He goes on his feed and he sees all these Andrew Tate type guys, right? You know? Thankfully, my brother is a sweetheart because he knows he has two older sisters and a mom that will, I can't say beat the shit out of. But, you know, that will give him a real talk to. You know, if he ever... It's okay.

Brown families understand. Brown families understand. That will beat the shit out of him. You know, that will completely, like, destroy him if he even tries to suggest some of those ideas, right? So it's about the broader system that you're in, you know? For every Andrew Tate, there's also a John and Hank Green, you know, right, who are running the Crash Course series. There's a Miss Rachel, you know. It's not about banning the medium, I think, because there are so many policies.

communities on these medium. I think it's thinking more deeply about do you have a narrative to combat that narrative? Do you have an ecosystem, an environment for that child to grow up in that doesn't make its messages so tempting? Because an outright ban has rarely been effective throughout history. We can talk about everything from you said drugs, we said drinking in the prohibition era to online gambling. And like, unfortunately, it's a very blunt tool for a very nuanced problem. And I would hate for these far right misogynistic pieces of shit, sorry, I'm just rolling with it now because you said I'm allowed to, for these guys to think, like God, we only told you right at the end. For these guys to think they're banning us because we want, right? Because we're better, because we speak the voice of truth and like no one wants to hear it.

No, like you're dumb, your ideas are stupid and only desperate, lonely kids listen to them, which is why ultimately you will fail. And I wish if we were able to be more hands-on in our approach to these social media, in our approach to these kids' upbringing, you know, we wouldn't just have to say, well, no, we have to ban it. And I know for me, at least, you know, I would have been a much unhappier kid if I didn't have crash course and some of these, some of these better sides of social media. Fiona, closing thoughts. Yeah, I think, look, the reason that social media feels full of extreme things is because society under capitalism today is becoming more extreme. and people are desperate for answers to the problems in their life. And if you have young men, for example, whose life is getting worse, their perspectives of a future of owning a house,

which is totally in tune with masculinity, what is your role, that is not possible anymore under capitalism. And you introduce someone like Andrew Tate who says, I know your life is awful and life is unfair. The problem is women, right? Or it's not just Andrew Tate, it's Tommy Robinson. saying, I know your life is awful and life is unfair. The problem is immigrants. That is why these people grow on these platforms because they're tapping into a real mood that exists in society

because people are desperate. This is why the solution to the Andrew Tates or the Tommy Robinsons of the world is not to ban them from social media. It's to combat the ideas that they're putting out. I think it's interesting what Tamara said because I actually think who is the left-wing alternative to Andrew Tate, putting out. a clear, coherent policy or idea that answers the problems in people's lives, whether it's young men or women. I think there isn't one that exists. So what we have right now is a culture war where you've got extreme right-wing figures and then governments who try and ape it in their own sort of way. You've got the Labor government that just tail ends, especially on the question of

immigration, which is contributing to a rise in racism. I know through my own social media, I feel like there's so much racism on social media and in society. And why is that? It's because the Labour government is trying to manage a crisis of capitalism. And it's very useful for them actually if people like Tommy Robinson spend all of their time online saying all of the immigrants are the problems for your lives. So this is how we have to use social media. We need to think about promoting a revolutionary alternative to the horrific ideas that are being put out there. That's what I do with my social media.

That's the power of the right ideas that can connect with people. And I'll do that online and I'll do it in real life through real meetings, at university campuses, at protests with as many people as possible. That is the solution, I think, that we need to be talking about moving forward. Fiona, Tamara, thank you so much for joining us on Media Storm. I certainly feel inspired by the younger generation. Helena, you literally make us sound geriatric. I don't know, yeah, like I'm 32.

I'm fucking 30. I'm cool and I'm young. Okay, Grandma. End of podcast. Fiona, let's start with you. Please tell us where people can follow you if they're still allowed to. And if you have anything to plug. Yeah, I would say you can follow me at Fiona Lally on all kind of platforms.

And yeah, the main thing is to fight these horrific ideas, to fight Tate, to fight to fight Tommy Robinson. We need to fight capitalism. And you can only do that in real life by getting organized. Thank you. And Tamara, where can people follow you? And do you have anything to plug? I'm at Tamara Hermani on Instagram and you can find a lot of my work on Middle East Eye. And since we're talking about digital safety, I'm actually coming out with a big, long explainer on online betting and the efforts to ban it for people's well-being. So do keep an eye out for that. Thank you for listening. If you want to support Media Storm, you can do so on Patreon for less than a cup of coffee a month.

The link is in the show notes and a special shout-outs to everyone in our Patreon community already. We appreciate you so much. And if you enjoyed this episode, please send it to someone. Word of mouth is still the best way to grow a podcast. So please do tell your friends. You can follow us on social media at Matilda Mal, at Helen Awadier, and follow the show at Media Store. MediaStorm is an award-winning podcast produced by Helen Awadier and Matilda Mallinson. The music is by Samfire.