Tell WEF: the kids are alright on social media

My daughter has just turned 18 and always been at the forefront of digital technology. So who better to consult on one of the hot issues of the day: how to protect young minds from the excesses of social media while preserving the enormous benefits of the digital world.

I was preparing to moderate a World Economic Forum panel on “Growing up online: rethinking youth, social media and digital governance” – essentially, to ban or not to ban.

I asked her what she would do if teenagers her age and younger were blocked from social media. Many countries have introduced or are considering restrictions or “guardrails” on youth access to Instagram, TikTok and the rest.

She thought for approximately two seconds. “I’d use a VPN,” she replied.

Armed with essential research, I headed off to a gathering of policymakers, technology entrepreneurs, academics and assorted experts in Dubai. The WEF’s Global Regulatory Innovation Platform had convened the session as part of the Global Future Leaders annual meeting at Madinat Jumeirah.

The subject was serious enough. Social media offers young people unprecedented opportunities for education, creativity, friendship and entrepreneurship, but also exposes them to bullying, exploitation, addiction and potentially devastating psychological pressures.

Governments everywhere are struggling to decide what to do. Australia has opted to ban social media accounts for under-16s, while the UAE agreed to proposals in June to set the minimum age at 15. Other countries favour regulating the platforms themselves, improving digital education or placing greater responsibility on parents.

In the US, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta coughed up $18 billion in a settlement over claims it had turned children into social media junkies.

The discussion, conducted under the Chatham House Rule, was refreshingly candid and occasionally revealing.

My daughter’s VPN strategy, it transpired, was hardly original. One technology expert described an extraordinary phenomenon observed when governments impose age restrictions: the number of elderly social media users suddenly rises, apparently because teenagers have persuaded their grandparents to open VPN accounts.

There is something touching about an 80-year-old grandmother in a remote village suddenly developing an insatiable appetite for TikTok.

One African policymaker caused quite a stir when he told the session that his small country had decided to ban the internet completely for a period while the government worked out what to do about fake news, disinformation and the other evils of the digital world.

Another contributor offered a cautionary tale about an attempt to block the popular online game Roblox in one country. Children responded by installing VPNs, enabling them to play the annoying game but also opening the floodgates to all sorts of genuinely horrifying material.

There was also a robust discussion about parental responsibility. One participant pointed out that seven-year-olds do not generally purchase expensive smartphones and monthly data packages with their own earnings. Somebody is supplying the hardware and paying the bills.

This struck me as a powerful argument, and a wake-up call for parents who think it should all be left to governments, schools and Silicon Valley.

Another participant described attempting to persuade a young child that a games console was unavailable because of a worldwide technical outage, even using AI to manufacture photographic evidence.

The child immediately identified the picture as AI-generated and dismissed the attempted deception. Another victory for the kids.

Further reading:

• UAE bans children under 15 from using social media
• The UAE has drawn a line on social media. AI should be next
• Child social media restrictions to reshape Gulf advertising

More serious contributions exposed genuine differences over how to balance protection and freedom.

Some argued that restrictions are indispensable because social media companies cannot reasonably be expected to police business models designed to maximise engagement. Others warned that governments can exploit seemingly benevolent safety regulations to suppress political dissent, restrict free expression and monitor their citizens.

The economic dimension is frequently overlooked. Digital platforms can help young entrepreneurs build commercial reputations and portfolios of work that employers increasingly value alongside conventional qualifications.

But the same platforms encourage an exhausting culture of comparison, in which young people measure themselves against carefully manufactured images of success, beauty and prosperity.

And looming over everything is artificial intelligence.

Governments are struggling to regulate the social media technologies of the past two decades just as AI threatens to transform the entire experience through synthetic personalities, convincing deepfakes and algorithms capable of intimate persuasion.

I left with three conclusions: outright bans are easily circumvented, parents cannot abdicate responsibility, and individual governments face an unequal contest with technology corporations whose influence transcends national boundaries.

One note to the organisers for the next such session, which will probably take place in Davos in January: it would have been good to have some kids in the room. They get it.

Frank Kane is Editor-at-Large of AGBI and an award-winning business journalist