I listened to the Prime Minister this morning, giving his statement from Downing Street on the banning of social media for under sixteen year olds. I thought he spoke very well. He clearly had a lot of support within the room. It must have been an unusual experience for him, to be greeted with prolonged applause, and even a few whoops. Sometimes I think he must be the loneliest man in the UK, certainly the most beleaguered, constantly being written off by the right wing press, constantly the butt of criticism not only from His Majesty’s Opposition, but from within his own party. I hold no brief or remit for the Parliamentary Labour Party, but I find all the intrigue, the backstairs jobbery, the jockeying for position and the ministerial resignations “on grounds of principle”, deeply distasteful. I rather admire Sir Keir’s doggedness. He must have a core of steel. His people underestimate him.
With respect to the proposed social media ban, he, the father of teenagers, was clearly speaking from the heart. He only wants his children, everybody’s children, to be happy, and safe. We all know of the tragedies of teenagers who have been bullied on line, who have been repeatedly exposed to harmful content, and who have taken their own lives. He wants children to log off, to read a book, to go outside to see their friends in the real world, and to go to bed at a reasonable hour.
It is perhaps surprising that some of the bereaved parents of these children oppose the ban. But their opposition is quite coherent. They feel the ban puts responsibility on the shoulders of children, and parents, while letting the big tech companies off the hook. After all, if there is a problem with content, shouldn’t the problem itself be fixed? We may anticipate that such contentious issues will be hotly debated over the next few months, until the legislation is put in place, probably next spring.
Some people think the outright ban will be futile, because tech-savvy teenagers will merely find a way around it. But that, pointed out the PM, is not a reason to abandon the legislation. After all, he said, we don’t allow children to drink alcohol, just because some kids manage to get served in the pub. Good point.
But I think there’s an aspect of this debate that has been overlooked. If social media are inherently bad for children, why are they not also bad for adults? Perhaps they are like cigarettes, poisonous and addictive. We don’t sell cigarettes to children. And if we adults are reckless enough to buy them, well, on our own heads be it. We put a label, perhaps atop the image of a diseased lung, stating that this product will kill you. We are even seriously considering incrementally banning smoking across all ages, by making it illegal for anybody born after a given year ever to purchase tobacco products. Such legislation seeks to avoid the recognised difficulties of prohibition, by seeking to ensure that successive cohorts never become addicted. But then there are vapes. And vapes are attractive to children.
But on the whole, the government, and society in general, does not believe that social media per se are bad for adults. In fact, the government is greatly enamoured of the products of Big Tech. They see the commercial possibilities. Big Tech, and “Growth”, are inextricably bound. The government is fearful of missing out on the economic possibilities of Artificial Intelligence. They don’t want to get offside with the big companies who might take the huff and move offshore.
So a trope you often hear is that Social Media are inherently neither good nor bad. What matters is how they are used. If, for example, they are used to disseminate misinformation, as appears to have happened in Southampton and Belfast last week, then clearly this is an abuse of the facility. On the other hand if my German conversation class chooses to chat in German on WhatsApp, then this is surely pretty harmless and might even be quite useful. (Though I have to say I opt out; I don’t want my phone to be pinging all the time.)
I would question this notion of the amorality of social media platforms. You have to look at a social entity, not as it might be in theory, but as it exists in practice in the real world. The harms inflicted upon adults are not that different from those experienced by children. The algorithms designed to addict, the fatal attraction of doom scrolling, the deliberate dissemination of lies, the channelling of specific content designed to lure the most vulnerable, the ready availability of violence and pornography, the anarchic, wild-west lack of editorial control in what are essentially online publishing houses, what’s possibly to like?
I’m aware of a certain irony in that I am making these comments on an electronic blogsite. I think of my weekly blogs much as I think of my occasional letters to the newspapers. They are publications. I must take care what I say. Most of all I must believe that what I say is true. I have professional indemnity in case I get it wrong. Currently it is up for its annual renewal, and this year my insurance brokers are asking me some questions. Do I write or publish any religious or political content? Well, yes. Do I write biography/autobiography? Well, I often write about people, and I have just sent a memoir to a publishing company. Do I actively disseminate content in the USA? No. But I’m sure over the course of the last 11 years blogging I must have said something less than complimentary about the current resident of the White House. Heaven forfend! Nowadays, these things can be picked up by immense computers, using up vast amounts of water and energy, scrolling for data, in these dark satanic mills cropping up all over the country.
I’m not sure whether to be reassured or intimidated by these questions. The world is becoming more litigious. But I write, much as I used to practise medicine, hopefully in good faith. You decide upon an action that you think is right, commit to it, and then move on.
But of course as a doctor I also I took out professional indemnity. I still have it. Just in case I’m called upon to be a Good Samaritan.
jamescalumcampbell 