Future Outlook and Cultural Shifts

From the Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story I'm Man Vin Ranna. A Ker Starmer after a bruising series of resignations last week and with a by election in Makerfield which could yet decide his fate in number ten, looming on Thursday. It's hard not to think about your legacy And on Monday morning, the Prime Minister made a bold new announcement Today is a big moment for our country This is a big step Real change for our children and our future Because today I can announce that the government will ban access to social media for all children under the age of sixteen Unusually, this was a policy that even the opposition, certainly the conservatives, could get behind. It's really important to be clear from the outset that this won't be perfect. There are alcohol banss, there are cigarette bans, young people do get around them. But what this is going to achieve is a cultural shift to say that social media is not safe for young people What about teenagers themselves How do they feel about it Obviously angry because I'm obviously addicted to a book Scott G Is still gonna to ban anything It should be tiked off there it's really addictive How do teens feel about their relationship with their phones and how it's affecting their development If I'm feeling a bit awkward to go t up basically. I'll sometimes just don't even go on anything, J just pretend to be on my phone. It's awkward situations. J pretend to scroll. Will this ban save a generation of teenagers Will they just find ways around it And how will big tech respond? The story today The social media ban. Is this an end to brain root and doom sccrolling you have kids? are they on social media Yes and yes. Tell me about that. I have a very personal a very personal interest in this story Besides being a dad to two teenagers, Mark lman is also a technology correspondent for the Times Well, I guess the other thing to mention is that I started this job in twenty twenty two And the first pecially the first story I worked on was the inquest of Molly Russell who as many listeners will know, took her own life after looking at toxic content on social media. Her father, Ian Russell has been instrumental in getting to where we are today. although ironically he doesn't support it. But going back to my children. yes, they are both on social media. They're teenagers, fifteen and seventeen And I' probably in the in the middle of all this This is a very big moment for everyone in this country, really. This is the first time we're looking at properly curtailing the powers of big tech, particularly when it comes to children and parents across the country will be worried about this. on a very regular basis And Mark, you've actually 've been talking to researchers who have been looking at how teens use social media Tell us a bit about that study Yeah was a really fascinating look at how kids are actually on TikTok. And I think we hear so much about kids and social media and you know, obviously the media reports on stuff, the media reports on the extreme stuff generally because that's what makes the news But actually the ordinary mundane general use of TikTok. Unless you sit with your child, or with a teenager alongside them And look at it It's actually really hard to know what they're doing because everybody's experience by definition on these individual algorithmically fed platforms is completely different So this research company called Revealing Reality in conjunction with a children's charity called Five Rights They recruited about twenty one, twenty three teenagers across social different social groups and then genders betweenetween fourteen and sixteen And they said, lookook, well you will you let us know how you use it? but by giving what's called a digital donation. and most people don't realize this, but Her digital history on TikTok is recorded Everything you look at, everything and how long you look at it, when you look at it, whether it's an ad or a video, what type of video It's there both for the company to know and for someone else if you give it to them. So they got that and they analyzed it they also did screen recording. so we could experience what the kids were experiencing which which is, you know, I encourage everyone to look at that To sit through a minute of that is a challenge. because of the speed. And just the sensory intensity of it And send They interviewed them in depth about their experiences. And they also got them to do real time sururveys like after they come off TikTok, something would ping up on their screens, say, how do you feel And Mark, were they using TikTok as a model because it's so popular with kids. It seems to be so addictive, or was it because it's able to give you that record of everything they've ever seen Well, it it's the primary one where kids spend most of their time. I mean, look, Snapchat is kids are on that as well But that is much harder because it's primarily a messaging app so you don't get access to that, but this is you can get access to the content Okay, so seatbelts on, just talk us through that sensory explosion. What is it that kids are actually seeing when they're on TikTok How would you describe it is So Ill tell you what it's not and what they didn't find. They didn't find that They were looking at what their friends were doing And obviously that was the original premise of the social network. You're going to connect to your friends. see what they would do. And that wasn't what they were experiencing And then Obviously there wasn't lot of communication going on. It's not like a messenageer service It's mostly A lot of AI generated, you know, meme type videos This is in the words of the researchers that have virtually no content value whatsoever. That's not a peajority statement on my part, but that's what they found. They just found that it was just something that And this was an experience that the kids talked about. It sort of gives you brain rot. And I think this is something that that sort of belieelving that these teenagers don't know what's happening to them are not aware of what's happening to them That is not the case, and that's what comes out in this research. They are totally aware of what is going on and not able to change their habits So presresumably they wouldn't be too uncomfortable with the idea of of a ban on some of this Yeah and this is what's amazing is that there was a fourteen year old boy, Alfie was very clear that he wanted a ban. I think they should only ban of certain things My welc. TikTok Is still going to ban anything It should be tiicked off definitely. Why do you think it should about ted? It's like I said, it's really addictive And then the researcher ask him say, why are you You know, why do you think you're addicted? And he says, becausecause when I didn't have it just get annoyed and bored Yeah, says obviously I wouldn't be very happy. I'd be agitated afterwards, but you've got to ban it And you know, if you don't just ban it, you've got to get rid of infinite sccroll. And if I ask you if there's anything you could change about the internet orbe make it less addictive How do you think about that? H None of this scrolling ing I mean, this is almost like a very sophisticated sort of analysis. This is what the government's looking at. and other government' looking at are ban the infinite scroll, you know, the algorithmic feed, the thing that keeps you on it brought up concept of addiction and this is what a lot of the kids do. they use that word addiction. But obviously will it be an addictive than that instead of possibly like Do in some extra revision school I would be like scrolling on TikTok It's very it's very addictive I think I think we're all guilty of G wait on TikTok and say, you know, how long will be onon it her? thirty minutes and then we end up being and you end up on for I was when Ious Mark, I mean, just for people who aren't on TikTok, just explain that. You talked about the speed. I mean How much content, even when it is brain rotting stuff, how much are they actually consuming on a daily basis. Well, hundreds and hundreds of videos a day. I mean, they said about seven hundred videos a day. That's ten thousand videos a month It's obviously not like Yeah sitting through Netflix or even YouTube to a certain le YouTube has shorts, but this short form video encourages you to flick through it I see that no. I see that no. seeee that? yes, I'll be on that for next, next, next and it's just this constant stream pushing through to the next video. Yeah, there's all the scrolling in between. Scrolling yeah There's I suppose there's the opportunity cost of that. know, if you're going through hundreds of videos a day, you're spending a lot of time on your screen Is that something? they were very aware of they were. The amazing thing is quite how much of it was happening at nighttime in between the hours of ten and four AM This was not a study of what restrictions they had on at home I don't know what rules are based in their household A lot, a lot of these twenty one kids. We're looking at it between ten and four AM It's so interesting to be able to hear from Tenagers themselves about their daily experiences of being online and also their worries about it. The fact that it doesn't sound like a ban would be entirely unwelcome for them That's obviously a fascinating study, but it's a small sample, as you said, just over twenty teenagers. Is there more scientific evidence to suggest that social media is actually harmful, especially to young people Look, it's a heavily Beuted area put it that way and we get into correlation and causation and the arguments for whether there is evidence for causation rather than correlation But I actually think we're beyond that now The government set up a program, a research program It Must have been six or eight months ago, maybe when all this started bubbling up It's a long term study to look at the potential impact of screen timee social media on the mental health of children. going to going for years. But they're not waiting for it anymore No one's waiting to see the peer reviewed paper that nails causation Parents are clamoring for change based on what they see rather than the document that proves it, you know? It is, as you say, highly disputed within the scientific community. I mean, just spell out some of the concerns they've raised. Yeah, onene of the concerns is around sleep and one of the teenagers interviewed, Sally has, you know talked about how it's affected her sleep light It has Aected sleep. Stephany how Because instead of sweping, sometimes I've just been like scrolling on TikTok U O was like the more I go the later it gets Anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts. I mean, it's a very, very long list, but I think that the one that has pushed people more than anything else. time it's the opportunity cost of the time This is played into the you know, the arguments that Jonathan Hate has written about American social Psychologist in his book The Anxious Generation. it was this idea that childhood was disappearing kids were not going outside and doing things because they were on their apps. And Sally has also talked about how You know, social media impacts her daily life. Using social media gets in the way of other things. because Even if I'm not doing anything that day or in that moment I could of still like planning to go somewhere. or maybe like try to convince my family to go out. Yeah. I suppose inerms of childildhood's disappearing. know there's the, as you say, the opportunity cost of being outside and playing and developing in different ways There's also that sense that while they're on their phones, while they're on their screens. They're able to see things that you wouldn't normally come across as a child. the content itself isn't very regulated. Is that one of the things that is almost indisputable Yeah, I mean, you know, going back to this this research. What they found was the content was mostly sort of commercially driven It was someone trying to sell you something. The other thing obviously that emerged is you get a lot of sexualized content at the edge of the regulations or the platforms Rose So it's a lot of especially female sexualized content. And then you also get professional adult content creators, only fans type content that is not in breach of the rules, is highly suggestive but is there to funnel you from TikTok onto their platform bit. On Fans or some other platform. It's what they called On Fans funnel content I mean all of that. is really alarming for parents to understand that their kids could be scrolling across this every day Are the kids themselves aware of the dangers, you know of the content they're seeing, of how it's affecting their development socially. Listen, I think it just depends on child to child. You know, the interview with the girl, the fifteen year old girl in the research She used it as an emotional crutch sometimes. I was on TikTok quite a bit yesterday when I went to my granddads after mononopoly because there was nothing else for me to do. And you was sort of just like doing random things around the house. so I was just scrolling on TikTok. So when you feel awkward, you go on TikTok basically I'll sometimes just don't even go on anything, justust pretend to be on my phone. It's not cons situations But what would you do if you're pretending to on your phone pretend to scroll. I've done it before where it's died and I've been like in a social situation and just T to theorow Why why why I don't really like talking to people. that was the emotional crutch for her or just the way that she dealt with an awkward situation and it signaled to other people that she was involved in something and didn't want to communicate Coming up So what does the government's ban actually cover We'll go through the detail in just a moment It's been giving us an insight into how teenagers are actually using social media, particularly TikTok the sort of stuff, the sort of content that they're seeing, how they're using it as part of their lives As we've been discussing, the government has decided to do something about it 's how that's come about. Yeah, I think that it's gone through various different stages But it started to ramp up over the last sixix to eight months. there were private members bills that were brought in by members of the Labour Party which has support from the backbenches that were sort of, you know watered down, you know, that angered, I think a lot of Bench labor MPs who then pushed again for a ban and indicated their numbers. So there was the labour pressure from labour. pressure from the conservatives who latched onto this as an issue and pushed very hard. for a ban on smartphones in schools, mandatory across the nation. And then for a social media band. And then you had sort of a parliamentary battle which used various mechanisms to pressure the government into agreeing to do something they were backed into a corner I did seeing Australia Take action. Did that make a big difference Well, it didn't, it didn't. It was very useful to delay. in saying, Well, Australia's done it. let's just watch and see what happens. Anti ban people say, look at Australia. they brought it in and the kids are still on social media, which they are. And then the pro ban people are kind of like, well It's happened They've crossed the line, they're the first people to do it. It just needs some refining, some enforcement and we'll get there. So it depends, but I think that A government stepping over the line actually implementing it is always going to be helpful because You learn Yeah. And in terms of having learnt from Australia's experience, I mean, how exactly is the government going to implement it here? What is actually being banned? How do you begin to enforce it? Yeah, so they're actually going to be s of they call it Australia plus. They've set up sort of a definition of a platform that's going to be banned which is a mixture of social media, social interaction plus a sort of algorithmic feed. And that's caught about ten platforms in Australia plus a few others that have brought themselves into it And we seem to be going down that route And we will know more when the regulations are laid down in the coming months And just remind us which platforms in particular have been targeted We don't know in this country, but if you know if you look at Australia You've got all the big ones. you've got TikTok, Instagram, Facebook Snapchat YouTube read it, which did fight against it in Australia s obviously, formerly Twitter The big ones you kind of are familiar with, the ones that aren't there in Australia are the gaming platforms, the government wants to do here is ban certain features on all platforms, such as strangers contacting each other. So a stranger cannot contact a child under sixteen on a gaming network and you will not be able to live stream yourself if you're under sixteen on any platform. even if it's not banned. So those features have to be turned off. And then we move on to chatbots, certain romantic chatbards are going to be banned for eighteenens and those features on the general chat bots, the chat TBTs, if they have a romantic element to it, you can't offer it to an under eighteen. So that's the sort of general scope of things, but it's the implementation of it, the crucial thing is once you've got a platform Ban. How does that platform know who's over sixteen and under sixteen? And this is where the law in Australia has slightly fallen down is it doesn't have really, really tough requirements. on the platforms to do the age checks And they appear to have basically be backsliding on that The conspiracy there was the You know, or the opponents of the tech firm say they are deliberately trying to kill this this law to make sure no one copies it. That is definitely a view that is held within the online safety community in Australia and elsewhere The studies have shown that nine out of ten platforms are not doing the robust aid checks and there are a lot of ways to check And obviously, the other thing to mention is The platforms know exactly how old you are. they? Yeah, they do. They sell advertising to you That's an interesting fact that You know underlines all this. I mean, for instance, meta going through all its users and if it thinks they are a teenager, it puts them into their teen accounts. They have AI systems that know how old you are by what you talk about by Sometimes someone will wish you happy birthday So they've got lots of signals you give out from your social media account to tell the platforms how old you are And they're a commercial platform that is designed to know everything about you to sell you advertising. said this shouldn't be so hard. No No, it shouldn't be. and this is what all the regulators are getting their sticks out Actually, look you don't have to use one of their systems. You can use a third party systems and we they have ways of checking your age from your face, from your mobile number, from credit card details, from your email, even your hands, believe it or not And Mark, it's so interesting how the online safety community, as you say you know, are alleging that the tech companies are enforcing it badly in Australia in order to make the law go away. How have they responded to the ban here? What are they saying? I think generally speaking, the platforms no. that there is a global shift in sentiment They know how things are changing. It's not just Australia. It's all over Europe's looking at this Asia has already brought stuff in. so they have to adjust to that and they are adjusting to it What they don't like is bands that are like this in the sense that one platform it is in and one platform isn't in They like a level what's called a level playing field. Ii. e, why don't you ban the features and functions across All platforms rather than name a platform I just bann that. And this is where we get into the opposition to this ban, even from sections of the online safety community, most notably in Russell, who I mentioned at the beginning and his charity, the NSPCC They are much more in favor of forcing the companies to change their products I telling them that this Sure is no longer acceptable Auto playay, infinite sccroll, no longer acceptable. You have to get rid of it. Changing that for everyone, including Everyone and all platforms. Wow And this is the argument against this blanket ban because they say, Well, look if you just ban the platform, You don't actually change the platform Right, There's no incentive for them to fix these these things Yeah, if you think it needs fixing, obviously, but yeah if you think that is a product design fault then get them to change the design fault. And actually, the government is saying it's going to look at the sort of addictive features as a potential in the next stage where we get a report back in July. So they may look at infinite sccroll and just say, this is banned across all platforms. But I guess if you're banning the platform itself, there is a sort of weird dynamic there Yeah Mark, one of the other criticisms that we've heard a lot whenever this topic comes up is just exactly that thing of how hard it is to enforce that Kids will find a way around, they always do So it becomes a meaningless piece of legislation Is that a valid argument or do you think we're sort of making pererfect, the enemy of the good. No, I think it's valid in the sense that no legislator wants to come up with a law that is widely evaded, avoided and essentially becomes ridiculed that that's a disaster So yeah, the effectiveness of it is extremely important. What I think everyone acknowledges is you will never have a watertight system. Now Will it mean that no child ever logs onto social media again But look, this might shock you, but it doesn't shock parents of teenagers. They get around other laws too But we don't say, Oh, look, a teenager managed to get a drink somehow. So let's not bother banning alcohol sales to children. We don't do that, do we? That will be utterly ridiculous. And so then you come back to what the Prime Minister talked about as a cultural signal. It's essentially twofold. It's a cultural signal from the government saying, These products are not really safe for your children They're not right for your children We are saying this as a cultural line in the sand. And they're also saying to the tech companies themselves We are the democratically elected government we will decide what is good for our constituency and this is the law and you have to obey it. And that's quite useful for them in an area where they have traditionally found it very difficult to come up against very well resourced, powerful entities like the tech companies in the past. The great ambition from politicians who talk about this who are desperate for this to happen is that it'll lead to some kind of cultural shift even if it isn't watertight, as you were saying, there will be a cultural shift that will affect the whole of society. I mean Looking down the line, you know, five years from now Who do you think this will most help. If it goes well, you know, what is the change we'll see Well, obviously, you know, this is not really about my children who are fifteen, seventeen or even I think maybe even the thirteen or fourteen year olds. it's more about This sort of four, five, six year olds, you know, so much of this is about networks and peer pressure. And it's very, very hard to resist a network when everyone's on it. That was always the difficulty And then small parent groups started to try and break those networks by saying as a group, you know, at a local level, No, we're not going to buy our children phone until their ex old and they were saying that when their kids were seven, they were writing pacts to do it to try and break the network What this is trying to do is essentially break that network at a national level And it will probably be effective in the long run because what will happen is that the market will change. you know smartphones are starting to change and everything is shifting slowly but in one direction So yeah, you will probably see days five and six year olds emerging in a world where their phone when they're fourteen years old is probably not as powerful or internet abled or you know slightly more restricted. They are not taking advice into school, which is already starting to happen And yeah, the conversation, the language around it is going to be different. but technology will be there AI is the next frontier and as we restrict social media, AI chatbots are going to become the new way that people interact with technology. So there's a whole new set of issues that are coming down the track pretty fast It was the technology correspondent for the Times, Mark Selman There's more coverage of the social media ban, and Mark's piece about that study looking at teenagers and TikTok online at thetimes. com you can also watch the interviews with three of the teenagers who took part in the survey and who you heard from briefly in this episode although their names have been changed to protect their identities The producers today were Michaya Arnerson and Harry Bly. The executive producer was Edward Drummond Sound design and theme composition were by Mal Laetto There's more coverage on the social media ban at thetimes. com If you can, do leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow