When Facebook first launched in 2004, it started as a social media platform for college students only. If your email ID had a .edu suffix, it won you eligibility. By the time Facebook went global in 2006, it allowed anyone over the age of 13 with a valid email address to access the platform.
Two decades later, as many countries debate bans on social media access for children under the age of 16, the question that arises is this: do these bans mean social media is an adults-only space now? And if it is, what implications does that have on today’s internet culture?
The bans reveal deeper truths about how we define adulthood. We self-censor when we see children around us, hoping to not make a negative impression on a young person still feeling their way around the world. Will a child-free social media then impact censorship and self-censorship? In 2024, X (formerly Twitter) amended its policy to allow users to post ‘consensually produced’ mature content, including nudity and pornography. That might have opened the door to Grok being asked to digitally undress people. While women are perhaps the greatest victims of this, children too became targets. Will an adult-only platform then further empower users to make such problematic requests? (In India perhaps, this is now a moot point, since all adult content has been banned by the Indian government from March 2026.)
If social media needs to be governed by age restrictions, we must also then question all content about or featuring children that is posted on these platforms.
After all, the core reason for most bans is to keep children safe from being exposed to harmful content and abuse online. The other reason is to place limits on their screen times, which have been on the up and up. But does that line of decision-making then impinge on the rights of children below 16? The bans seem to gesture at that age-old parenting position: only we know what’s best for you.
The other concerns are practical. If the only security measure to verify age online is to enter your birth date, that’s an easy step for children to manipulate; it’s no different than using fake IDs and hoping to get into a bar. Reportedly, kids in the UK and Australia have admitted to entering fake birth years and drawing fake moustaches to make accounts on the sly. This sort of cheating will likely have a negative influence on children who are still learning socio-cultural concepts of trust and honesty.
This restriction takes an interesting turn in patriarchal societies. In India, for instance, girls still face much greater social and cultural restrictions than boys. For many young girls, social media is the one democratized space where they can interact unrestricted with people who live outside of the social mores of their milieu. When such bans are enacted in India, it further empowers restrictive setups to keep girls and women off the internet altogether, all under the garb of doing it for ‘their safety’. Statistically, only 33.3% of women have ever reported using the internet in India, as opposed to 57.1% of men. With a large gender divide between urban and non-urban centers yet to be bridged, the ban may have more negatives than positives.
On the other hand, shows like Adolescence very effectively depict the negative impact of children being influenced by the internet, especially in spaces that their parents are not actively monitoring. The show also touches on concepts of ‘the manosphere’, where adult men are the primary drivers of problematic content about being alpha males. While such content is harmful for children, these bans don’t quite consider the impact on other adults who might be equally malleable. Recent studies have shown that the adolescent phase of the brain lasts from the age of 9 to 32, which means that those even beyond the age of 16 might be susceptible to such harmful messaging. And so, while these bans imply trust in adult discernment, they also send out another message about adulthood to children: not all adults know better, but we’re the ones looking out for you.
Yes, the world is watching with bated breath how these bans play out within the countries that have taken the first step, Australia being patient zero, in many ways. But when the onus continues to fall on the habits of users, rather than the growing ambit of the platforms and the need for them to take accountability on making the internet a safer place for all, it does bring into question who these bans are intended to serve.
What they ultimately reveal is not just how we think about children online, but how much we overestimate adulthood itself.
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