Why a ban will not protect our children from the dangers of social media
Many of us working in child safeguarding and championing children’s rights find ourselves dismayed by the persistence of such quick-fix, headline-grabbing proposals.
While superficially attractive, a blanket ban in of itself will not have the desired effect. Young social media users will undoubtably find a work around of the ban, much like they have in regions where it has already been attempted. This risks leaving children and young people vulnerable in an unregulated online world.
Here’s five reasons why we believe a blanket ban is not the best approach;
ISPCC’s solution
ISPCC has over twenty years experience in protecting children as they navigate the digital world. This has given us a unique perspective and deep insight on the challenges faced by children and young people as they increasingly live their lives online. That is why we demand social media platforms make meaningful changes to create safer digital environment for young people, through the following;
- Safety by design – children’s safety and wellbeing built into platforms from the outset.
- Robust age assurance – effective, privacy-preserving measures that provide age-appropriate experiences.
- Platform accountability – technology companies held responsible for the risks their products create or amplify.
- Safer algorithms and content – addressing addictive and manipulative design and children’s exposure to harmful content.
- Digital empowerment – giving children the skills to recognise risks, understand how platforms influence them and navigate the online world safely.
How ISPCC has always been working for children's digital rights and protections
Many of us working in child safeguarding and championing children’s rights find ourselves dismayed by the persistence of such quick-fix, headline-grabbing proposals
Ten years ago, at a conference it co-hosted with Vodafone in Dublin Castle, the ISPCC warned that bullying, abuse, pornography, sextortion, public humiliation and grooming were some of the worrying issues that children and young people were encountering online.
The conference was held after the Law Reform Commission had published proposals calling for the reform of the criminal law and the establishment of a national statutory oversight system, to promote and support digital safety.
Then, ISPCC called upon the Government of the time to adopt the proposals suggested by the Law Reform Commission, saying that there was an urgent need to protect children when they are online.
We have a regulator and an online safety framework in place now, still bedding in, however, and somewhat curtailed by judicial reviews and other legal challenges. But, a decade later, little else has changed, except that more and more children and young people are spending increasing amounts of time online from an earlier age with little meaningful effort made by technology companies to ensure their digital safety while they do so.
While it is now widely accepted that a whole of society approach is necessary to provide true protection for children, the idea of ‘shared responsibility’ has gained traction with many commentators and public representatives who extol the benefits of a social media ban for under 16s.
These measures, while superficially appealing, shift responsibility onto parents and children disproportionately, rather than addressing the role of the technology companies whose deliberate and intentional designs underpin much of the harm, for profit Parents are not a homogenous group and not all children have parents and caregivers who are competent and motivated to be involved in their children’s lives, offline nor online, thus compounding their vulnerability with such a proposition.
The report of the EU Kids Online 2026 comparative study calls for safer, more private and empowering digital environments for children, pointing out the need to ensure that children can benefit from digital technologies while being effectively protected from harm.
The EU Kids Online study draws on a representative survey of 28,465 children aged 10–16 in 19 European countries, conducted between April 2025 and April 2026 by the EU Kids Online research network and it includes approximately 2,000 children from Ireland
Across the 19 countries, 48% of children say they feel safe online, compared with 65% who reported always or often feeling safe online in 2020.
Professor Sonia Livingstone of the London School of Economics and Political Science, a co-author of the report, said: “The 2025 EU Kids Online survey finds a sharp rise in the proportion of children who have been upset online in the past month – from 7% in 2020 to 23%. Since European children gain important social and informational benefits from going online, it is vital that we improve their safety online more effectively.”
The ISPCC fully agrees, particularly as this is what Irish children want too.
According to a report from Coimisiún na Meán entitled ‘Online Safety & Children’s Digital Lives’ which focuses on Irish data from the EU Kids Online survey:
- 69% of children surveyed agreed it would be better to teach children about staying safe online rather than a social media ban
- Most children surveyed (67%) did not think that a social media ban would be effective as children would find a way to get around it
Separately, a total of 144 organisations, including the ISPCC, and experts working across child rights, digital rights and mental health have written to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen ahead of her State of the European Union address on September 16, calling for a harmonised European framework to make technology safe for children by design and default.
The signatories are urging President von der Leyen to pursue a transformative approach that addresses the safety of technology itself, rather than relying primarily on denying children access to digital services wholesale.
Earlier this year, more than 140 children’s rights organisations across Europe, including the ISPCC, co-signed an evidence-based letter to the European Commission making clear that it is neither fair nor effective to require children to bear the cost of rectifying problems that are fundamentally embedded in the design and business models of online services.
A blanket ban risks entrenching harm by diverting attention away from where meaningful accountability should lie. Instead, we should be insisting on a strict “safety by design” standard, supported by privacy-preserving and robust age assurance mechanisms. This approach places responsibility on technology companies to create safer environments from the outset.
Efforts to improve online safety must not come at the expense of children’s rights — including their rights to information, education, participation and play. A crude age-based prohibition would not only fail to eliminate harm but would likely displace it, pushing young people towards less regulated or entirely unregulated spaces where risks may be even greater.
Furthermore, such bans risk diminishing the urgency to address the systemic issues that drive harm online. These include behavioural profiling, addictive and manipulative design features, recommender systems that amplify harmful content and commercial practices that exploit children’s data and vulnerabilities.
Many of the risks children face online stem from the design of the product and service. Features that prioritise engagement over wellbeing can expose young users to manipulation, exploitation and grooming — often in ways that are difficult to detect. Children who do not recognise such harms are unlikely to report them.
It is essential that young people learn to question what they see online, to understand how algorithms shape their experience and to trust their instincts when something feels wrong. However, as the sophistication of these technologies develop and now with AI embedded into them, this is becoming a mammoth challenge to support. The impact of harmful online content inevitably spills into children’s offline lives, affecting their wellbeing.
At the ISPCC, our priority is to empower young people with the resilience and coping skills they need to thrive in an increasingly complex digital world.
Our Childline Listening Service operates 24 hours a day, every day of the year, ensuring that any young person who needs to talk will always find someone ready to listen.
We are also a proud partner in the EU-funded Irish Safer Internet Centre project alongside Irish Internet Hotline, National Parents Council and Webwise, under the coordination of the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration.
We will now await publication of the text of the proposed EU Kids Act to better understand how the Commission proposes to proceed with this social media ban.
