Social Smoking

The UK’s head of counter-terrorism policing, Matt Jukes, recently compared the harm caused by children using social media to the cancer risks caused by smoking.

Jukes explained how smoking was clearly killing people but the government was slow to react and regulate, with decades of supply and advertising going untouched.

He went on to say how strengthening the Online Safety Act to allow the policing of private messages would be valuable. Apple’s recent removal of end-to-end encryption in the UK is one step towards that, however it also raises the general security risk to users.

Data protection is important, but at what expense? Protecting children and the public is important, and perhaps there should be no expense.

With Childwise reporting that children between 7 and 16 spending approximately 3 hours and 48 minutes online every day, the influence of the internet is undoubtable. However, if one source is heavily monitored or closed down, users will quickly (and pretty joyfully) move to another, as we saw when TikTok went down for a day in the US over security fears. Users defied the ban by joining Chinese social channel, RedNote, finding plenty of mutual interests and breaking down cultural barriers.

Protection is important, but regulation of the underlying tech that drives addiction, gets people stuck in echo-chambers, and creates an over-reliance, may be a better way of policing. On the flip-side, will people always be drawn to rage-bait and extreme views, just how they have been drawn to tabloids for decades? Are the altruistic goals of our positive-minded visionaries irrelevant? It’s all up for debate…