And this bullying thing, is that a new thing that never happened before the internet? The bans are this generations “video games cause violence” stupidity. You are only looking at negatives, never mentioning the positives things about the internet, I say the internet because the ban includes YouTube, which is hardly social media and is already incredibly censored. You probably wouldn’t be able to comment on this post if Ofcom gets wind of the UK lemmy instance, because the owner would have to shut it down.

Here’s what a more responsible person than me has to say about social media bans (machine translated with small edits from German):

Protecting children and young people must be a top priority. In the same way, children and young people also have rights that extend to the digital space: the right to access to the media, the protection of data and privacy, but also to the protection against violence and exploitation as well as the right to freedom of expression and information.

If children and young people are banned from using social media platforms, there will always be some or maybe even many that circumvent the bans. When these adolescents encounter dangerous or traumatizing things on the Internet, their inhibition will be much greater to talk about it and seek help. This will also be known by the adults who contact these children and young people on the Internet and put pressure on them. Cybergrooming, i.e. the initiation of contacts out of sexual interest, is already an enormous danger and we have to do everything we can to enlighten and offer help and not to slam the doors here.

In addition, it is problematic when young people are completely shielded from large parts of the Internet. They need to learn a responsible approach to it, and not only when they have turned 16 or 18 and can then be confronted with everything that can be found on the net without preparation. This only postpones the problems to a later date.

Children and young people also receive meaningful, interesting and socially relevant information via social media platforms. There is no daily newspaper in many families. Adults we young people receive information and news via social media. The media has adjusted to this and offers a lot of content there.

In rural areas, in the event of illness or for people with certain disabilities, social media is an essential means of keeping in touch. The same applies to people who have left their homeland and have contact with family and friends via social media. I think taking these opportunities from young people is wrong.

Also, the practical implementation is not as simple as it seems: in order to identify a certain age group, the age of everyone on the net must be checked. There are different options for this. This can lead to the platforms collecting even more data from all of us and, on the other hand, they are also error-prone. This means that some young people continue to have access and some adults do not. Both are problematic.

[source in German]