Tom Baldwin, Socialist Party National Committee
Social media use among young people has been under the spotlight recently. Last year, Australia became the first country to ban its use by under-16s. This month, MPs rejected bringing the same policy to Britain but did vote to give government ministers the power to implement wide-ranging restrictions, without reference back to parliament.
A recent poll showed that as many as four in five adults backed a ban, with worries including harmful content, grooming and online bullying. However, opponents of a ban included the children’s charity NSPCC, which argued it would leave children unprepared for online life and would drive them to less regulated and potentially more dangerous sites instead.
A review of scientific research on the effects of social media on the mental health of young people revealed contradictory findings. Some online behaviours, including excessive use, were found to be very damaging. But other studies found positive effects in making young people more connected with one another.
It is impossible to develop a one-size-fits-all policy to balance these varying aspects of social media use among children. As with most technology, it is not wholly good or bad – its effects are determined by who owns and controls it, and for what purpose.
Big business
Social media is big business, owned by filthy rich billionaires. Among the most-used platforms, Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram are all part of the Meta group, owned by Mark Zuckerberg, the sixth wealthiest person in the world. X, formerly Twitter, is owned by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.
On this basis, the internet is not the liberating place it was once claimed to be. Social media does not simply put users in direct contact with one another, their interactions are controlled by colossal corporations which exist first and foremost to make a profit.
The money to be made is astronomical. Users’ data is collected in order to target advertising. In 2025, advertising income from social media overtook that from traditional media for the first time. More than half of all worldwide advertising revenue came from just five giant tech companies. Meta made over $18 billion in just one quarter of last year, despite multi-billion-dollar spending on AI investments.
Maximising profit from advertising means maximising user engagement. It is in the interests of the social media firms to make their platforms as addictive as possible, in spite of the possible damage that this causes users. Research has shown that the drive for profits leads to either polarisation or bias in the content that users are shown. Many readers will have noticed they now see less from their friends and more sponsored content where there is money to be made.
Capitalism has long found ways to promote unrealistic expectations as a way to generate a consumer market – for example, promoting unrealistic body expectations to women and girls. By collecting data about users’ habits, interests and search history, it is possible to tailor ads to exploit a users’ specific insecurities or anxieties, for example.
The corrosive effects of the profit motive are impossible to avoid on the basis of private ownership. We cannot trust that the social media firms will do enough to protect children voluntarily. For example, the media regulator Ofcom estimates that 86% of children aged 10-12 have social media accounts, despite most sites requiring users to be 13.
A blanket ban on under-16s using social media would be difficult to enforce. One in five Australian teens were still using platforms like TikTok two months after their ban was implemented. A UK law mandating websites to introduce stronger age checks for people accessing adult content, including pornography, resulted in a surge in the use of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) which can circumvent laws of this nature.
Tackling the social media firms by law carries other challenges too. They are not just a source of wealth, but of enormous influence. Estimates for the number of people that regularly use social media reach as high as two thirds of the world’s population. Facebook alone reports three billion monthly users. On average, social media users spend over two and a half hours a day on sites.
While the main reason people give for using social media is still to connect with family and friends it is also increasingly looked to for news and information. More than half of Brits aged 16-34 now use social media as their primary source of news. Last year that tipping point was reached across the whole of the US population.
Despite attempts to portray themselves as such, no news source is impartial. Each present events from a particular point of view. The Socialist is proud to be a paper that promotes the interests of the working-class majority, we don’t hide our political leanings – they’re right there in the name of the paper!
Most news outlets make a pretence of objectivity, while in reality reflecting the outlook and interests of their billionaire owners. This is the truth of the capitalist myth of the ‘free press’.
Social media is no different. Algorithms govern what content is pushed, enhancing some points of view and diminishing others, all under the overall control of its super-rich owners. This is displayed in the crudest possible way in the existence of ‘Truth Social’ – Trump’s own social media platform. Many more people will have experienced the change in content they are likely to be shown on ‘X’ since its takeover by Elon Musk.
The fact that profit, or indeed for owners to build a platform for promotion of their own ideas, are the top priorities for social media owners, will always run contrary to the objective of striving to protect young people from harm online.
While it remains in the hands of super-rich capitalist owners, social media will not be able to be under the democratic control of the working-class majority. Nationalisation is needed. But that is not to simply argue that the reins should be handed over to governments also acting in defence of the capitalist system.
For example, TikTok is owned by a cohort of investment firms, but that includes a Chinese state-owned firm with a 1% ‘golden share’ – giving it the ability to outvote all other shareholders on certain issues. But that element of potential government influence does not give the working class a democratic say over how the technology is developed and used.
The Socialist Party stands for nationalisation under democratic workers’ control and management to allow for nuanced decisions on how social media is developed and used, making use of what is positive while seeking to overcome the dangers.
Nationalisation would allow for the algorithms to be open to inspection, for example using the existing expertise of tech workers organised through their trade unions. Without the drive for profit, harmful advertising could be excluded and platforms could be run with the primary objective of facilitating social connection.
Rather than news posts from those paying the highest price, or with algorithms having a tendency to promote the most polarising posts, political views could be represented in proportion to their support in society as determined by the popular votes in elections – a system far more democratic than the domination of billionaires that we see today.
Addressing the harm billionaire-owned social media can cause young people is important, and nationalisation is a key demand. But we have to fight more broadly for a decent and safe future for young people. For decent homes, jobs and services – and for socialist change to bring an end to the capitalist system which promotes and reproduces divisive and reactionary ideas, and which brings war and environmental destruction. Join us in fighting for socialist change!
Your views
We asked young Socialist Party members what they think of proposals to ban social media.
What’s your view? Email editors@socialistparty.org.uk
I think that a social media ban would be dangerous for young people because it would remove the ability for young people to interact with each other and build relationships in the modern world. It’s increasingly harder for people my age to find spaces that are welcoming, affordable and safe so social media is really the best option for communicating.
I understand that social media has negative effects on young people’s mental health and development but that is, in my opinion, due to the poor management of the platforms. A better measure would be to regulate these companies and fight against the way they exploit the people who use them.
Jack
I think, while it would be a massive change for young people in Britain, a social media ban would be a net positive. I’ve been online for most of my life, I posted my own video for the first time when I was about 8 and it was because I was so obsessed with the online creators I saw – I totally thought I could be like them!
I started posting regularly when I was 11, I had a cosplay account where I lip-synced to songs dressed as anime characters. I was lucky enough to be mostly accepted by people around my age and did not engage with the dangerous side of being a young girl on the internet.
I was younger than a lot of my peers and often got into petty fights and upset myself over the actions of people I didn’t know. My overexposure in youth ended up coming back to bite me when I started getting bullied at school, girls would screenshot these videos and share them around to mock me.
In regards to child safety and protection I think a bill is one of the best ways to do it.
Alt-right content has been on the rise through the internet and unfortunately it’s aimed at young boys. Since the release of the Epstein files, there’s been a rise in jokes about the situation and ironic songs using terms referring to ‘Epstein’ and ‘the island’ as casually as any other slang. There’s a point at which it stops being satire and starts promoting a system that undermines the reality of capitalism and the cruelty of the 1%.
Social media is also used to push overconsumption as the new chic, acting like a £1,000 beauty and skincare routine is the only way to achieve beauty and acceptance. To a bullied young girl with bad skin, consumerism felt like the only way for the ostracisation to stop.
There is an idea that social media is the new pamphlet and can be a way for young people to learn about socialist ideas. But it can just as equally be a way to do the opposite. Social media owners are incentivised to increase their profits.
It’s my opinion that the social media ban would be actively anti-capitalist – pulling impressionable young people away from a consumerist mill and hub of alt right ideas. Without AI-generated videos of angry people of colour or falsified news stories, we allow people to think for themselves and act in the world on their own accord.
Eleanor
