ThinkStart: A Teen Social Media Ban is Politician-Friendly, But It is Not Kid-Proof

A Teen Social Media Ban is Politician-Friendly, But It is Not Kid-Proof

Mohit Rajhans take

Every time the “ban social media for teens” conversation flares up, it feels like adults trying to solve a messy cultural problem with a clean legal gesture. It is understandable. It is emotional. It is also a little bit fantasy.

The Independent’s argument is basically this: a blanket ban is clumsy, teenagers will route around it, and the real fix is media literacy for kids and adults, plus actual platform accountability.

I’m with that, with one important addition: in 2026, this is not just “social media.” It is AI-shaped social media, which means we are not teaching kids how to “use apps,” we are teaching them how to live inside persuasion engines.

Why bans feel good, and why they often fail in practice

A ban is simple to explain and easy to announce. It signals control. It gives parents a storyline.

But in real life, bans do three predictable things:

They push behaviour underground. Kids do not stop. They migrate to group chats, alt accounts, VPNs, smaller platforms, or whatever is least supervised. The Independent points out the “false sense of safety” problem and that harms can shift elsewhere online.
They punish the average kid while the worst actors adapt fastest. The teens at risk, or already being targeted, are not saved by a headline.
They let platforms and governments off the hook. We end up arguing about parenting choices instead of product design and enforcement.

If your policy is “good kids will comply,” it is not a policy. It is a hope.

The uncomfortable truth: adults are also untrained

The Independent nails a point most debates dodge: adults did not get proper training either. We learned by getting fooled, outraged, scammed, and manipulated, then we called it “the internet.”

That gap is now bigger because AI lowers the cost of deception.