For the past fifteen years, we have allowed children to grow up inside products built to maximise attention, influence behaviour and extract commercial value. During that time, concerns around anxiety, body image, self-harm content, online bullying and compulsive use have moved from the margins to the mainstream. Parents, schools and health professionals have been left trying to manage the consequences.
What’s surprising about the planned UK under-16 social media ban is how long it has taken. History may judge this less as a bold intervention and more as the moment society finally acknowledged what had been obvious for years. Debates about personal freedom, parental responsibility and enforcement have existed for a long time.
But there is also a business question at the heart of this issue. Why did it take so long for policymakers to challenge a commercial model that depends on maximising engagement from increasingly younger audiences?
Too often, these harms have been treated as unfortunate side-effects of progress. The assumption was that technology’s benefits would naturally outweigh its costs. That now looks painfully naive. A ban may help, but it is not enough. A healthier relationship between young people and technology cannot be created by an age threshold alone. The bigger question is what kind of childhood we are trying to protect.
The debate also has to move beyond access and towards design.
Why have we accepted infinite scroll, algorithmic amplification and variable reward loops as normal parts of childhood? Why have platforms been allowed to push so many of the social costs of growth onto parents, schools and public services? And why did it take so long to recognise that products designed to maximise time spent may not be aligned with the interests of the people using them?
For advertisers, investors and business leaders, this is more than a public policy debate. It is a reminder that business models ultimately have to retain public trust.
Many instinctively see regulation as a constraint on growth. In this case, it may be the opposite. The major platforms have built extraordinary businesses by optimising for engagement, scale and automation. But they have also accumulated extraordinary levels of public distrust. That is not a sustainable foundation for either long-term growth or advertising effectiveness.
Advertising depends on public consent. People need to feel that media environments are broadly trustworthy, fair and socially acceptable. When that confidence disappears, regulation becomes inevitable.
In that sense, tougher regulation may be what saves the platforms from themselves. Clearer age controls, safer defaults, less harmful amplification and better accountability could make these platforms more legitimate, more investable and more attractive to advertisers.
Regulation is not just constraint. It is permission, renewed.
Dan Gee is Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of MFM.
