THOUGH Sir Keir Starmer’s government is not the first to restrict citizens’ speech in Britain, one of his darker legacies is the intensification of the country’s censorship regime. Indeed, his parting gift, just a week prior to his resignation, was the announcement of a plan to ban under-16s from accessing social media. Unless his successor does a U-turn in the coming months, Britain is on course to introduce one of the most far-reaching social media surveillance systems in the world.
Starmer announced his plan to exclude under-16s from social media at a press conference on June 15. He planned to introduce a comprehensive social media ban for under-16s, a step which he argued was necessary to ‘give kids their childhood back’.
‘Tech giants had their chance and failed,’ he said, ‘but we’re stepping in to protect children, back parents and set a new normal for future generations.’
Starmer’s fighting words were dripping with benevolence and nobility. But as Ronald Reagan said: ‘The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help”.’
Government officials have a compelling interest in protecting their own power and enhancing their control over society. So when they advocate a major intervention in the public sphere and wax lyrical about ‘saving our children’ it is not wise to take their word for it. Any massive intervention in social life, in particular one backed by coercive force or financial sanctions, is likely to have at least some significant downsides. And this is indeed the case for the proposed social media ban.
Unfortunately, many well-intentioned citizens do not see this. They focus on the ‘emergency’ of social media harms and on the promised benefits of government action, and turn a blind eye to the potential risks of an age-based social media ban. One hears the argument, ‘what is your solution?’ as if the absence of a quick-fix solution justified any alternative, no matter how destructive.
There are many problems with social media bans, not least the fact that they have limited efficacy for a generation that is tech-savvy and will easily find workarounds like VPN apps to get around regulations, and that they may potentially drive some teens into a ‘dark web’ of platforms that operate ‘under the wire’. But it could be argued that partial efficacy is better than zero efficacy, and that the unfortunate fact that some teens are driven into the ‘dark web’ is an acceptable if regrettable cost of improving the lives of many young people.
Even if we accept these arguments, they do not remove the major risks a social media ban poses for freedom of speech on the internet. The main problem with age-based social media bans enforced or overseen by government is that they alter the government’s relationship with all social media users of all ages in disturbing ways. Specifically, they give government a new gatekeeping power over social media usage, by requiring all social media users of all ages to present some form of identification as a precondition for accessing social media platforms.
Initially, this new surveillance system might be used exclusively to control under-age use of the internet. But it also creates an unprecedented surveillance infrastructure that could later be leveraged by governmental actors to monitor and control the behaviour and speech of adult citizens.
If that seems far-fetched, consider the fact that people, including journalists, have been investigated by the police in the UK for political commentary on social media that might cause ‘offence’ to others. Or consider the fact that the Joe Biden administration secretly pressured social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook into restricting content that contradicted official government propaganda on masks and vaccines during the covid event.
With these precedents in place, it would be naive to think that a social media gatekeeping infrastructure would be restricted to its original purpose. It is only a matter of time before such an infrastructure would be exploited to shut down political dissenters.
Those who are willing to endorse the creation of a massive, government-controlled surveillance infrastructure, had better contemplate its risks head-on, and honestly weigh them against its likely benefits. The outcome of that balancing act will depend on how much you trust government to oversee an ambitious surveillance system without exploiting it to shore up its propaganda machine and silence its critics.
This article appeared in the Freedom Blog on June 21, 2026, and is republished by kind permission.
