Banning children from social media is an easy way out for adults. Educating them takes more effort

Luca Zingaretti is right when he describes mobile phones as objects capable of turning into ‘devils’ own contraptions’. He is right when he observes that young people have been thrown into a gigantic experiment devoid of rules. Finally, he is right when he describes the anguish of a parent who sees their daughters weathering a storm of addiction, constant comparison, self-promotion, bullying and loneliness masked as connection. The diagnosis is serious. It is the remedy that fails to convince. No, banning social media for under-16s is not the right approach. It is not, first and foremost, because it confuses protection with prohibition. At sixteen, a young person does not suddenly become immune to the manipulation of algorithms, the compulsive quest for approval, fake news or verbal abuse. Keeping a young person out of the digital world until a certain age and then handing it all over to them at once does not mean educating them: it means postponing the problem. Then there is a practical issue. Absolute bans, when they concern widespread, easily accessible and socially accepted behaviour, often lead to clandestine activity, not abstinence. Fake accounts, made-up ages, friends’ phones, profiles hidden from parents: a strict ban would risk shifting social media use into an area that is even less controllable. The paradoxical result would be to have young people online from an early age, but more isolated, less open and less willing to ask for help when something goes wrong.

The ban also provides a convenient excuse for all the adults involved. For the platforms, which could claim to have done their duty simply by formally closing the door to minors, without altering algorithms, notifications, addiction-inducing mechanisms and recommendation systems. To politicians, who could replace the more difficult task – imposing transparency, effective controls, privacy safeguards, limits on profiling and rapid tools to combat harassment and illegal content – with an age threshold. Finally, to families, who would be encouraged to delegate to the law what remains, after all, a daily educational responsibility.

The point is not to leave young people at the mercy of the digital market. The point is to establish a form of supervised, progressive and proportionate freedom. We can limit screen time, ban mobile phone use at night, prevent constant notifications, set minors’ profiles to private, block personalised adverts, disable geolocation, put in place simple parental controls and introduce proper digital education in schools. Above all, we can draw a distinction: it is one thing to message friends, quite another to be exposed, without filters, to a platform designed to hold one’s attention; it is one thing to post a photograph, quite another to be drawn into feeds of extreme content automatically pushed by the algorithm.

Even the comparison with smoking or alcohol, often invoked by supporters of a ban, only works to a certain extent. Social media are not merely products to be consumed: they have now become spaces where relationships, information, learning, creativity and participation take place. They can certainly be harmful. But the response to a risky public space cannot be the total exclusion of young people. It should be the creation of a less toxic space and more informed citizens. Banning is reassuring because it allows adults to finally feel in control. Educating is more demanding, because it requires us to stand alongside young people, to familiarise ourselves with the platforms they use, to set boundaries and to tolerate the odd conflict. But this is precisely what adult responsibility entails. We cannot ask young people to learn to live in their own time whilst preventing them from engaging with it. Instead, we can demand that that time be governed by better rules. And teach them, little by little, not to become its prisoners.