Earlier this summer, the UK government did something I’ve been expecting for a while: it announced a ban on social media for under-16s. A big moment, but not a shocking one.
Before I get into why, three quick disclosures.
I got my first job back in 2008, just as Twitter and Facebook were taking off, because I was early to understand and explain what social media would do to brands. I then spent three years working inside a social media platform – I can say I was ‘trying to drive change from within’, but it was still a social media company paying my salary. And finally – arguably more importantly – I’ve built multiple communities using social media as a tool to connect people. Those communities gave me somewhere to belong, and they’ve created real positive impact, on and offline.
So yes, I’m a hypocrite. But I don’t have an axe to grind, or wares to sell. I just want to say, as plainly as possible, that we’re living through a major shift in how people use these technologies – and that shift reflects how the technologies themselves have changed over the last two decades.
My view is that social media has evolved into a dangerous tool that future generations will look back on the way we look at cigarettes: a harmful toxin that enriched a few and poisoned the rest.
