John MacDonald: Forget the under-16 social media ban, but do try this 

Does Labour really think Facebook and all the other social media platforms are going to be paying any attention to its threat to crack down on them?

Yesterday, the party’s social media spokesperson Reuben Davidson warned “they will pay the price” if they don’t make the kinds of changes Labour will demand if it forms the next Government.

Which, essentially, is letting people decide whether they want to be bombarded with content or just see posts from people they know and accounts they follow.

Some social media platforms already allow this. Labour wants them all to do it.

The party says it will also bring in a social media ban for under-16s.

I think the ban would be a complete waste of time. But I do like what Labour is talking about with the social media companies being required to give people some sort of algorithm control, so they can decide whether they want to see random rubbish or just content from people they know and accounts they follow.

I know that would rely on the companies making the choice available and people making a conscious decision to switch off the random stuff.

But I think that would do way more to protect young people, especially, than any age limit. And I’ll tell you why. I’ll give you a couple of examples.

I was reading about two young people who really suffered because of random stuff turning up on their phones.

Varsha is the first one. When she was 13, she started getting workout videos in her social media feed and encouragement from girls she’d never met to start doing all sorts of dangerous calorie challenges.

Some of these anonymous girls bragged about how much weight they’d lost and how many times they’d ended up in hospital.

That started 11 years ago. She’s now 24 and still recovering from anorexia.

The other person I was reading about is a young chap in Melbourne. His name’s Flynn, and he was frustrated with his life and struggling with his mental health. Then those misogynistic videos from that awful Andrew Tate guy started appearing in his social media feed.

You guessed it. He was sucked into it and thought the only way he was going to improve his life was to become some sort of alpha male, putting women in their place, and all of that.

He eventually gave it all away after ending up in hospital.

These are just two examples. But they show the real danger of social media and why giving people the option of turning off the random crap would do us way more favours than a social media age limit.

It wouldn’t be easy. But we should, at the very least, give it a go.

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