Social Media Age Limits
The discussion
Fatima: I'd support a legal minimum age of sixteen for social media accounts. The platforms are designed to be addictive, and expecting a twelve-year-old to resist that design is unrealistic.
Liam: A ban just pushes kids onto platforms that don't check ages at all, where there's no moderation whatsoever. My younger brother would have found a way around it within a day.
Yuki: I think both of you are focusing on the wrong thing. The problem isn't the account, it's the recommendation algorithm, so regulate what the platforms can show to minors rather than whether they can join.
Fatima: But algorithm rules are impossible to enforce from outside, Yuki. You can't inspect a company's code every week, whereas an age limit is simple and visible.
Liam: Actually, that enforcement point works against you too, Fatima. Age verification would require everyone to upload identity documents, including adults, and I'm not giving a video app my passport.
Yuki: I agree the privacy cost is serious. Perhaps the realistic step is requiring a default child-safe mode with no infinite scrolling and no personalised feed for anyone under sixteen, without demanding documents.
Fatima: If that mode were genuinely on by default and hard to switch off, I could accept it as a first step rather than a full ban.