There are few sights more comic than a modern minister pretending to be the stern parent of the nation.
We
know the routine. The concerned expression. The voice lowered half an
octave. The carefully arranged background of flags, earnest young people
and laminated safeguarding jargon. Then comes the announcement. The
government is going to protect children online.
At which point
every parent in the country is expected to breathe a sigh of relief, put
down the gin and thank the Department for Being Sensible on Our Behalf.
This
would be comic enough at any time. It is even better when the
Government now proposing to supervise teenagers online gives the
impression of being unable to supervise itself. Sir Keir Starmer wants
to childproof the internet while presiding over a state that cannot
produce a defence policy that convinces its own side, let alone our
allies or enemies.
Still, never mind the Russian threat. Has anyone thought about Chloe scrolling Instagram?
To
be fair, there is a problem. Social media is not exactly a moral health
spa. Much of it resembles a Victorian freak show redesigned by
behavioural psychologists and funded by advertising executives. It is
addictive, vain, cruel, stupid and often deranging. The idea that a 14
year-old girl with a smartphone is simply exercising ‘choice’ while
being stalked by an algorithm designed to exploit insecurity is absurd.
So no, this is not a libertarian hymn to TikTok.
The
problem is not that politicians worry about the effect of social media
on young people. The problem is that they worry about it selectively.
The
same political class that increasingly tells us young people must be
protected from online manipulation is also very keen to tell us that
those same young people are mature enough to vote.
This is where the argument begins to wobble like a drunk on a paddleboard.
Apparently,
a teenager may not have the judgement to scroll through Instagram
without state supervision, but does have the judgement to help choose
the next government.
This is not a principle. It is a convenience.
Defenders
of the idea will say social media and voting are entirely different
activities. One involves psychological harm. The other involves civic
empowerment.
Up to a point. But both depend on the same basic faculties.
Judgement, emotional maturity, resistance to manipulation, the ability
to process information and some capacity to distinguish truth from
nonsense.
These are precisely the faculties politicians
tell us young people lack when the topic is social media. Yet they
mysteriously reappear when the topic is extending the franchise.
If
a 16 year-old is too impressionable to cope with Andrew Tate videos,
dieting influencers or Chinese-owned dopamine dispensers, why is he or
she suddenly immune to political propaganda?
Modern
electioneering is not a seminar in constitutional philosophy. It is
organised emotional manipulation. It uses fear, flattery, identity,
resentment, slogans and carefully tested nonsense. It promises free
things that are not free. It manufactures panic. It tells voters that
unless they vote correctly, the planet will boil, fascism will return,
public services will collapse and everyone decent will suffer.
But this, apparently, is citizenship.
The
difference is not that social media manipulates while politics
enlightens. The difference is that one form of manipulation sits outside
the control of approved institutions. The other benefits them.
That is the real story.
The
modern state has developed an elastic theory of childhood. Young people
are treated as children when the state wants more power over families,
technology, schools or speech. They are treated as adults when the state
wants their votes, their assent or their moral authority.
Too
young to smoke. Too young to drink. Too young to rent a car. Too young,
increasingly, to open an app without the digital equivalent of a
permission slip.
Yet old enough to help determine who runs the country.
Parents
have been quietly demoted in this arrangement. A mother and father may
apparently lack the wisdom to decide how their child uses a phone. Yet
that same child, guided by teachers, activists, celebrities and
taxpayer-funded campaigns, is expected to make profound democratic
choices.
The absurdity is not hard to spot. It merely requires the increasingly unfashionable skill of noticing.
This
is not an argument that teenagers are stupid. Many are thoughtful,
curious and better informed than adults who spend their evenings
shouting at the television. Nor is it an argument that all social media
regulation is wrong. Some of it may be necessary, particularly where
very young children are concerned.
It is an argument for coherence.
Parliament
cannot say young people need protection from algorithms then invite
them to swim in the sewage works of political campaigning and call it
citizenship.
It cannot claim to defend autonomy while constantly transferring authority from families to bureaucracies.
This
is the contradiction at the heart modern government. It does not want
young people to grow up. It wants them managed, mobilised and morally
useful.
So by all means let us have a serious debate about
children, screens and harm. Let us talk about addiction, anxiety,
pornography, bullying, parental responsibility and the tech companies
that have turned childhood attention into a commodity.
But let us also drop the pretence.
A
government that does not trust teenagers or their parents to navigate
social media cannot then turn around and declare those same teenagers
mature enough to help govern the nation.
That is not democracy.
It is babysitting with a ballot box.
