Wu Chen/Wen After Australia took the lead in legislating to ban minors under the age of 16 from using mainstream social media, two more countries followed suit: France passed a bill on March 31 to restrict the use of social network platforms by minors under the age of 15; Indonesia officially implemented a social media ban for people under the age of 16 on March 28. The French parliament defines social media as an "assembly line for mass production of anxiety", pointing out its erosion of young people's bodies and minds; Indonesia has tightened access to digital space with the goal of preventing addiction and online harm.
A global digital protection campaign for minors has begun. Behind the unanimous adoption of tough controls by many countries is a sober consensus on the same issue: social media has caused systemic harm to minors, with problems such as addiction, addiction, distraction, disconnection from reality, filter beautification, and online bullying. The negative impact on the growth of young people cannot be ignored.
The harm caused by social media to minors has evolved from a case-by-case risk to a common hazard. A large number of studies and real-life observations have confirmed that the platform algorithm accurately takes advantage of the physiological characteristics of the adolescent brain's "strong reward system and weak self-control system" to create high-intensity addiction with infinite refresh and instant feedback, resulting in continuous fragmentation of attention and rapid decline in in-depth reading and focused thinking abilities. The filter culture of the virtual world "beautifies" life and distorts aesthetics, causing teenagers to fall into self-doubt in comparison, leading to a significant increase in psychological problems such as depression and anxiety. What's even more serious is that the screen isolates real interactions, and many children show symptoms of "social bulliness" online and "social fear" offline, and their real-life social skills are weakened; online bullying is highly concealed, spreads quickly, and is deeply harmful, and also leaves long-term psychological trauma for minors.
However, setting a ban across the board based on age is essentially a relatively rigid and extensive control method. It may seem resolute, but it may not be truly effective, let alone respond to the real growth needs of digital natives.
On the one hand, there are obvious technical loopholes in age verification. Minors can easily bypass restrictions by simply borrowing their family members' identity information and modifying their account information. The stricter the supervision, the more likely they will be driven to switch to niche platforms with weaker supervision, making the risks even more uncontrollable. On the other hand, the ban ignores the reality of the digital age: children of this generation are born digital natives. For some marginalized and isolated teenagers, social media is an important channel to find identity and gain support. A simple ban may cut off their social connections and intensify loneliness and alienation. More importantly, the ban cannot answer the question of "how to use it". It treats the symptoms but not the root cause, and cannot fundamentally improve the digital literacy and self-protection abilities of young people.
Applying the wisdom of ancient water management, the real challenge is never to ban the use, but to find a balance between blocking and dredging. How to make good use of high-tech tools, especially the ever-changing AI tools, to rebuild warm face-to-face connections is a proposition that countries around the world must face head-on.
When Australia took the lead in banning social media, the whole world was waiting to see the effect of this "social experiment". Follow-up by France and Indonesia will increase the number of samples in the experiment, and its effects are worthy of our careful review in the future. More importantly, the whole society needs to invest more energy in cultivating digital literacy. The core is to teach young people to use high-tech tools rationally and not be dominated by tools. This means that media literacy, digital ethics, and information identification skills must be incorporated into normal education, so that young people can understand the logic of algorithms, identify false information, reasonably manage usage time, learn to protect personal privacy, and shift from passive addiction to active control.
More important than digital literacy is the reestablishment of warm face-to-face connections between people. The biggest hidden danger of social media is replacing real companionship with virtual likes and diluting in-depth communication with fragmented interactions. When teenagers’ social satisfaction is highly dependent on online feedback, their real-life empathy, expression, and stress-resistance abilities will gradually deteriorate. Therefore, the core of Shu is to bring children away from the screen and back into life: firstly, to return to the family, and keep family dinner table communication and living room interaction away from mobile phones; secondly, to encourage more real-world participation and experience, encourage sports, art, and outdoor exploration, so that teenagers can learn to observe body language and try interactive communication in real-world interactions, so as to learn to understand others, express themselves, and build trust.
In addition, we also need to learn to listen. Some minors may see adults' "patriarchal" declarations in the one-size-fits-all ban, but we do not want the "social media ban" to trigger a cat-and-mouse game and strengthen the rebellious psychology of minors. We also need to encourage innovation, especially the development of "responsible" AI, which may subvert the "attention economy" that social media relies on. It no longer gives you what you want (increasing addiction), but gives you what you need (guidance and recommendations). After all, digital communication has become an indispensable method for the entire society.
(The author is a financial writer, former editor-in-chief of "The Economist·Business Review", and founder of Chen Bookstore)
