UK ministers launch consultation on whether to ban social media for under-16s

The article mentions the dangers lurking on social media and doom scrolling. Something that is not mentioned however, is how it affects the intelligence and its growth in children. Teachers from all over the world are reporting significant drop in intellectual proficiency of children, including in literary skills and even very basic reasoning skills. Some descriptions are very disturbing, but teachers don't seem surprised by these reports. This seems to be caused by AI, in addition to social media.

Similar trends are seen in young adults too, especially with regards to their beliefs and culture. Many of them complain about being pressured into a life of vanity due to the race for attention on social media. I've seen research papers that indicate that the same culprits may be causing a drop in IQ among adults of all ages. I haven't seen anything so far that mentions elder adults in particular, but I don't think that they're doing much better either. From my observation, these technologies seem to drive people into extreme ends of the beliefs that existed before they were introduced.

None of this is surprising though, considering how these technologies designed to engage with humans. Many of the symptoms described in adults are exactly the same as substance addiction. And just like addiction, their effect on children is devastating and long lasting. Now it has reached a level where the consequences cannot be ignored anymore.

I favor personal choice and responsibility over big brother style control in these matters. But while those concerns remains, I don't believe that this can be solved without external intervention. It's a bit imprudent to expect addicts to pull themselves out of this mess. Meanwhile, denying people the true benefits of the internet and AI is also unethical and immoral. Due to these problems, we really need to objectively assess the outcome of social experiments in progress at places like Australia, even if they appear dystopian at the first glance. I don't know how entire societies can be saved from this scourge without sacrificing individual freedoms in the process. However, I do know that this is one serious problem that needs attention and solutions as much as any other serious problem we face (like climate change) as a species.

What you should be consulting on is to ban mobile phones for everyone.