Scrolling Through the Evidence: The Case Against

Social Media and Young People. Part 1: The Case Against

This is the first of two articles examining the impact of social media on young people. Right now, the momentum is overwhelmingly in one direction. Mark Zuckerberg is in the witness box. Australia has banned social media for under-16s. The House of Lords has voted for a UK ban. A government consultation is underway and legislation could follow within months. It feels like a matter of when, not if.

The evidence of harm is real and we examine it here in Part 1. But it is not the whole story. In Part 2, we make the case that technology is fundamental to young people’s futures and that banning them from the digital world may do more harm than good. Educators owe it to their students to consider both sides before the debate is settled for us.

A Reckoning

On 18 February 2026, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the witness stand in a Los Angeles courtroom, facing a jury for the first time over claims that Instagram was deliberately designed to addict and harm children. The trial centres on a young woman who alleges she became hooked on social media as a child, developing anxiety, body dysmorphia and suicidal thoughts. Legal experts have described it as the social media industry’s “Big Tobacco” moment.

Zuckerberg has been defiant, telling the court that he had navigated the safety of young users “in a reasonable way.” But outside the courtroom, parents who had lost children to suicide linked to social media told a very different story. What’s “reasonable” to a billionaire CEO looks very different to a parent worrying about their child. The trial’s outcome could trigger settlement talks for an avalanche of pending cases from families and school districts across the US.

The UK: It’s When, Not If

Here in the UK, things are moving fast too. In January, the House of Lords voted in favour of amending the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, requiring social media platforms to implement age verification, blocking under-16s within 12 months. The day before, Technology Secretary Liz Kendall, under pressure from a parliamentary petition calling for a ban with nigh-on 80,000 signatures, launched a three-month government consultation covering a potential ban, overnight curfews, restrictions on addictive design features like infinite scroll and raising the digital age of consent from 13 to 16.

On top of this, the Prime Minister has been clear and blunt. Keir Starmer, told the Commons that “no platform gets a free pass” and that the government would act swiftly. The NSPCC has said that if the government does not force change, a ban would be better than the status quo.

The political wind is blowing in one direction. While the government may reject the Lords amendment in favour of the faster route of secondary legislation, the trajectory is crystal clear: some form of restriction on under-16s’ access to social media in the UK looks increasingly likely by late 2026 or early 2027.

Addiction by Design?

The US Senate’s recent investigation into social media and mental health laid bare the mechanics. Research shows that features like “likes,” infinite scroll, auto-play and push notifications trigger dopamine responses comparable to gambling or substance use and a decade-long study found that increased time on social media correlated with higher long-term suicide risk among teenage girls.

The Zuckerberg trial has sharpened the focus of the picture even more. Internal Meta documents showed that the company set goals to increase daily user engagement time on Instagram to 46 minutes by 2026. Another internal document revealed that 11-year-olds were four times more likely to keep returning to Meta’s apps than older users. The company has estimated over 4 million children under 13 were using Instagram in 2015, which is below its own stated minimum age! Zuckerberg himself has admitted that enforcing age limits is “very difficult.”

Instagram: The Perfect Storm

Meta’s own leaked internal research has found that Instagram’s design is especially damaging to young people. Users overwhelmingly share curated highlights, fostering unrealistic comparisons. The company’s data showed 66% of teenage girls on Instagram experienced negative social comparison, which is worse than on other platforms like TikTok or Snapchat. Most troubling is that teens reported feeling “addicted” and unable to stop, even when they knew it was harming them.

When a US senator’s office set up a fake account posing as a 13-year-old girl and followed accounts linked to eating disorders, Instagram’s algorithm began serving up pro-eating disorder and self-harm content within a single day.This combination of social comparison, beauty filters and addictive design has been described by the platform’s own researchers as a “perfect storm.”

The Social Dilemma: The Insider View

If you haven’t watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix, add it to your must-watch list. This compelling documentary features former executives and engineers from Facebook, Google and Twitter explaining how platforms manipulate human psychology for profit. Former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris identifies three objectives driving social media: engagement, growth and advertising revenue. This is just the business model.

The documentary dramatises these mechanics through a fictional family story: one teenager falls into radicalisation, another develops depression, a third without a smartphone remains unaffected. It is powerful, and whilst occasionally a bit reductive, the central argument is hard to dismiss: there is a fundamental asymmetry between a child’s developing brain and a multi-billion-pound industry optimised to exploit it. As Harris powerfully puts it: “If you are not paying for the product, you are the product.”

Australia: The First Mover

Australia’s world-first ban on under-16s holding social media accounts, supported by 70% of Australians in a poll, came into force in December with platforms including Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, Facebook and X facing fines of up to A$50 million for non-compliance. That amount may be a drop in the ocean for those businesses, but it’s a sign of intent.

The Australian ban has given the global debate real momentum. Denmark is planning a ban for under-15s. Spain, Greece and Slovenia are working on similar legislation. The UK, France, Germany and Italy are all considering restrictions. Whether you agree with blanket bans or not, the direction of travel is unmistakable.

What the Research Says

Academic research tracking suicide rates among 15–24 year-olds in high-income countries found that four of eleven countries studied, namely Australia, Canada, the UK and the US, are experiencing rises in youth suicide associated with measures of social media use and economic inequality. Crucially, passive consumption of social media appears more harmful than active use, with upward social comparison and envy identified as key drivers.

A landmark 2026 meta-analysis in Nature, covering 168 studies and over 11 million participants, found that economic inequality alone does not directly harm wellbeing, but it does amplify other risk factors, especially poverty. In other words, inequality acts as a magnifier: it doesn’t cause the damage on its own, but for those already struggling, it makes things considerably worse.

The implication for social media is significant: its harms are unlikely to be uniform. Those who are already vulnerable, who are the very pupils we worry about most, are the ones most at risk.

So Where Does This Leave Us?

The case that social media is causing harm to young people is strong. The evidence of addictive design, psychological harm and corporate indifference is real and substantial. The regulatory and legal walls are closing in. Teachers see the effects every day – in attention spans, in body image anxieties, in the students who arrive exhausted from late-night scrolling.

However, is a ban the answer? In Part 2, we examine why shutting young people out of the digital world may create problems of its own. What can educators do to prepare students for a future which will be defined by technology, whether we like it or not.

By Neil Wolstenholme, Kloodle Chairman

Sources

Zuckerberg testimony — Los Angeles Superior Court, 18 Feb 2026 (CNN, NPR, NBC, CNBC)

House of Lords vote & UK consultation — House of Commons Library briefing CBP-10468, Feb 2026

US Senate RPC — Social Media and Mental Health, 2021

The Social Dilemma — Netflix, directed by Jeff Orlowski, 2020

Sommet et al. — Nature (2026), meta-analysis on inequality and mental health Australia’s Online Safety Amendment Act 2024 — eSafety