BUREAUCRATS are at it again. Elected and unelected alike claim to be there to protect the people. Once more. Whether Labour or Tory are at the helm, it is completely irrelevant.
This time the object of concern is not a microbe but children and social media. Ministers speak solemnly of safeguarding young minds, shielding the vulnerable, and creating a safer online environment. The language is familiar. Every expansion of state authority arrives wrapped in lofty words and rhetoric. The public are invited to focus on the danger being addressed rather than on the power being acquired. Pronouncements are presented as self-evident. Children, we are told, must be protected. But who protects us from the protectors, sensible people wonder.
State elites have become extraordinarily skilled at presenting themselves as humanity’s guardians. They portray citizens not as individuals capable of exercising judgment but as wards requiring permanent supervision. The role of government is no longer merely to enforce the law and protect basic rights. Increasingly, it seeks to manage behaviour, shape choices and regulate feelings. Every social problem becomes an invitation for intervention. Every intervention becomes a justification for further intervention. The proposed restrictions on children’s access to social media fit neatly into this pattern.
Social media can be harmful. So can television. So can junk food. So can gambling, alcohol, bicycles, chocolate, bleach and countless other aspects of everyday life. Even drinking water excessively can be fatal. The idea that civil servants – servants? – are more capable than parents to determine what children should see, read and discuss is not only absurd: it reflects a broader tendency to subordinate personal responsibility to bureaucratic authority.
The 20th century libertarian economist and political philosopher Murray Rothbard once proposed a simple test for evaluating the true priorities of government. Rather than listening to official rhetoric, he suggested observing which offences the state pursues most vigorously: crimes against private individuals or transgressions against the state itself. The question remains unsettling because it directs attention away from noble declarations and towards institutional incentives. Bureaucracies are mainly concerned with their own preservation and expansion.
If social media harms children, regulators require new powers. If those powers prove ineffective, they require stronger powers. If stronger powers fail, they require greater resources. The solution is always the same: more authority for the institutions that failed to solve the problem previously.
Restricting children’s access to social media is not merely about children. Effective enforcement requires age verification, identity checks, data collection, and monitoring systems. Technologies introduced for one purpose rarely remain confined to that purpose. Once established, they create infrastructure that could be adapted to new objectives.
Australia became the first Western nation to prohibit children under 16 from holding accounts on major social-media platforms while France, Denmark, Greece, Austria, Spain, Poland and Canada have all moved towards similar restrictions. Brazil has adopted stringent age-verification and parental-supervision requirements and is debating even tougher measures. The direction of travel is unmistakable: across countries, regimes and continents, governments are increasingly claiming authority over how people may participate in the digital world.
Powers granted to governments during periods of crisis are often presented as temporary and exceptional. Yet once the crisis has passed, those powers are rarely surrendered in full. What begins as an emergency measure gradually becomes an accepted feature of public life and what was once considered extraordinary becomes the new baseline from which further interventions are proposed. The ratchet turns in one direction. Current discussions in Britain about a digital ID system follow the same logic.
Recent history offers a vivid illustration. During the covid years, governments all over the world acted in unison imposing extraordinary restrictions on movement, association, commerce, education and even family life. Measures initially presented as exceptional and temporary soon became normal features of daily existence. Citizens were repeatedly assured that each new restriction was necessary, proportionate, and imposed solely for their protection. Whether one supported those policies or opposed them, the episode revealed how readily free societies can accept far-reaching controls when fear and safety are administered in sufficient dosage.
Once people become accustomed to government managing risks on their behalf, the threshold for future interventions inevitably falls. Bureaucrats invoke children. The emotional force of the argument discourages scrutiny. Appeals to children have long served as one of the most effective tools for enlarging state authority.
Indolence and sentimentalism make people believe that a public official, a complete stranger, will keep them away from all evils. The fallacy helps explain why so many willingly exchange autonomy for supervision. Scepticism toward concentrated power is not paranoia. As Friedrich Hayek observed, democracy – properly understood – is an individualist institution. However, every generation faces the temptation to exchange liberty for security, and follow leaders who promise protection in return for greater authority. The pledge is always reassuring. The consequences are often less so.
A healthy society should not depend upon the surveillance of public officials but upon the character, responsibility, and independence of its members. Those qualities cannot be preserved by constantly transferring authority from families to Kafkaesque bureaucracies funded by those who are themselves subject to constant surveillance. They can only be sustained by resisting the comforting illusion that government can solve every problem if only it is granted a little more power.
Yet it would be unwise to be overly optimistic. Collectivism is the ideology that exerts overwhelming superiority because vast majorities blindly believe state bureaucrats when they claim to work for the common good. That, more than any particular policy, is what makes the steady expansion of state power possible.
