As bans on children’s social media have spread across Europe and beyond, this is not the case in Estonia. On Friday, the country’s education minister said the restrictions “will not really solve the problems”, while warning that children will find a way regardless.
Although companies like Meta would love to have you believe it’s a fairy tale, social media addiction is linked to concrete negative consequences for children. Studies show that its harms range from depression and anxiety to lack of sleep and obesity. (The latter is all from targeted junk food ads.) On the other hand, teens can find community and support from social media.
A growing list of countries have looked at the negative data and concluded that the answer is to ban social media for children altogether. Although age limits vary, legislation has been created or enacted in Australia, Greece, France, Austria, Spain, Indonesia, Malaysia, the UK and Denmark – just to name a few.
The Education Minister of Estonia believes that these countries are approaching the real problem from the wrong perspective. “For me the way to approach this is not to make children responsible for that harm and to introduce self-regulation,” Cristina Callas said at the Politico Forum in Barcelona. “Children will quickly find ways to travel and use social media,” he said.
Instead, he said the responsibility lies with governments and corporations. “Europe pretends to be weak when it comes to big American and international corporations,” he said. But he called it a “sham”, challenging the EU to “really take this power and start regulating big American corporations”.
To be fair, the EU regulates the tech industry more effectively than anywhere else in the world. But the social restrictions of childhood persist.
Another argument against restrictions is that it is a short cut from a well-meaning to a more sinister erosion of basic freedoms. In February, France suggested that the next logical step after passing an under-15 social media ban would be to go after VPNs. After all, once you’ve passed a restriction, you need to enforce it – and that may mean taking away the tools kids can use to get around it.
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