Child Rights Network says NO to a blanket social media ban for children under 16

The Child Rights Network expresses its firm opposition to a blanket social media ban for children under 16.

Children, just like adults, have digital rights – and the government must put the best interests of the child at the heart of every decision affecting those rights.

The digital environment is no longer separate from our everyday human experience. It is an extension of our offline world, where adults learn, search for information, and communicate with their peers – a space to express ourselves and take part in what’s happening around us. Children, just like adults, have rights in these spaces, too.

Protecting children online, therefore, cannot simply mean keeping them away from the internet. It must also mean empowering them to safely thrive in it.

It means shaping a digital environment that supports their full range of rights – to survival, development, protection, and participation.

This is also the approach reflected in General Comment No. 25 of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.

Adopted in 2021, General Comment No. 25 provides guidance on how children’s rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child apply in the digital environment. The Philippines is a State Party to the Convention.

The General Comment makes clear that State Parties, such as the Philippines, have a responsibility to shape digital environments that are not only safe, but are also accessible, inclusive, and enabling for children.

We understand that legislators seeking a social media ban mean well. But banning children from social media does not protect them from unsafe environments. Making the environments safer is what protects them.

We teach children how to recognize risks, seek help, and talk to trusted adults.

We support parents in building family environments where open communication thrives – where their children can ask questions and be heard without fear of being judged, shamed, or dismissed.

We create school and online environments where children can navigate their daily lives with their physical and mental well-being intact, ready to face life’s challenges and free from bullying and other forms of abuse.

We build communities where children can speak up and report wrongdoing, and where everyone shares responsibility for keeping them safe – so they are not left isolated or pushed toward communities that may exploit, groom, or lead them down toward harmful life paths.

And we hold platforms and adults accountable for creating, enabling, or exploiting unsafe environments for children – including business models, platform designs, harmful content, grooming, exploitation, or other conditions that put children at risk.

A blanket ban risks being the opposite of a whole-of-society approach.

It risks placing the burden of navigating online harms on children and their families, while leaving the underlying systems that create those harms largely untouched.

The Child Rights Network believes that a blanket social media ban mistakes restriction for resolution. It is a simplistic answer to a complex issue that deserves more thought and consultation.

It sidelines the responsibility of legislators to consult in a meaningful way the very sector that it seeks to protect – the children. We ask, in all these debates and proposed resolutions about a social media ban: Where are the voices of our children?

As one child representative from the Batang Juan Network, a member of the Child Rights Network, puts it:

“I don’t think banning social media for everyone under 16 is the best solution because it is already part of how many students learn and express themselves. Many cities are already moving toward digital and smart spaces, so proper regulation, rather than a total ban, is as far as we can go. I agree more with age-based rules and parental guidance for younger users.

“Instead of a ban, schools could teach digital citizenship, online safety, and how to report cyberbullying and online abuse. Parents and guardians, together with schools, should work to guide children in using social media responsibly.”

This is what is missing from the adults’ push for a social media ban. We are forgetting who we are supposedly trying to protect – and the very principles of digital governance that we have committed to uphold as a State Party to the UNCRC.

Australia’s under-16 social media restriction, which was a political decision rather than based on scientific study, demonstrates that a legal ban does not necessarily mean children disappear from these platforms. In fact, as one independent study reported, nearly 86% of under-16s surveyed were still using at least one platform covered by their social media ban. In most cases, the parents themselves create the accounts for their children.

This means that our human experience – connecting with our loved ones, sharing, seeking information, expressing ourselves, and participating in the world around us – cannot simply be contained. We cannot wish away the digital environment that children have grown up in.

To our legislators proposing a social media ban: we can do better than simply taking away their access, their participation, and their rights, in the name of “protection.”

If we are to truly protect children, we need to make their environments safer and prepare them for the digital world they already are living in.

And most importantly, in all matters affecting children, we must not forget that they have a right to be consulted. They have a right to have their voices heard in this debate.