In the lively debate on under-16 social media bans, both camps risk missing precisely what it is that keeps people returning to these platforms. Embracing the insights of the twentieth-century French philosopher Michel Foucault, argues Grace Cerenko, sheds valuable light on how social media operates. Armed with this understanding, we can design effective legislation to alleviate its harms
The recently resigned UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer leaves as one of his domestic legacies the controversial under-16s social media ban. Evidence from Australia, however, suggests the ban's success may be limited. The UK risks the same cat-and-mouse game between regulators and a generation raised on technology. It is a game Westminster is unlikely to win.
But sidestepping restrictions is only a surface problem. The deeper flaw is misunderstanding what social media has become to the young people targeted. Not merely a way to organise the next hangout, posting online is a habit that tech companies have trained this generation to want. These platforms are predicated on producing that desire. A ban that leaves the ritualistic desire untouched can have only limited effect.
We gain insight into the power of social media by mapping it against Michel Foucault's analysis of confession. Foucault held that religious confession is not merely ritual, but a mechanism of social control that produces 'truth'. The power of pastoral confession is its incitement to make us speak, particularly about socially taboo topics such as sex. This continuous articulation of desires for interpretation and atonement before the priest led people to hyper-surveil their own thoughts.
For Foucault, the confessional booth was a tool for pastoral power. Its isolation within surrounding darkness; four walls separating the subject from the external world; and a dividing panel between the priest and the penitent, all created a noetic experience. Amid sensory deprivation, the confessional booth was an intimate chamber in which to reflect and confess.
'What's on your mind? What's happening?' Social media is a digital confession box with the same consequences as religious confession, but a starkly different structure.
Every prompt is an invitation to examine your inner life for something worthy of handing over to an audience. Each nudge teaches young people that a thought isn't complete until they share it. Routine incitement to confess is how these platforms mould their audience into what Foucault would term 'confessional animals'.
Social media has trained teenagers to declare their inner thoughts in the hope of uncovering their 'true' concealed identity, causing platforms to feel like an extension of the self
It trains teenagers to declare their inner thoughts in the hope of uncovering their 'true' concealed identity. That tie between disclosure and identity causes platforms to feel like an extension of the self. Consequently, many young people have reacted to the social media ban as though something was being ripped from them, rather than merely restricted.
In Foucault's confessional, power sits with the listener, who absorbs the disclosure and grants it meaning. Social media may have no priest, but the confessional booth certainly isn't empty. Thanks to its networked, communal design, pastoral authority is instead spread across peer groups. The online community becomes the judge, accepting or casting out each confession in real time.
What Foucault's perpetual spiral of pleasure and power teaches is that young people don't need encouragement to share. They are drawn to sharing because being heard, categorised, and approved of is reward enough. And because that authority sits with the collective rather than one figure, it's the crowd, not the platform, doing the disciplining.
Social media is addictive because it shapes how young people understand themselves. Every like or share from the group functions like admission into a new online family
This is exactly why bans are unlikely to work. With digital communities validating confession, every post earns a verdict in the form of a like, a share or silence. This feedback loop is addictive precisely because it's shaping how young people understand themselves. Acceptance from the group functions like admission into a new online family. This matters more than ever as real-world communities and spaces for young people continue to shrink. It's the digital version of a tree falling with nobody around to hear it: if no one responds, did you ever really speak?
The consequences reach further than mental health. In their search for approval, young people recognise that the opinions social media platforms are most likely to reward are those their peer group already holds. Polarisation is not merely an unfortunate accident; tech firms have entrenched it in their platform architecture.
The digital confession box lacks centralised authority. The rules on what it accepts are therefore vague and fluid. Young people are chasing a moving target, guided only by whatever has earned approval before. Such uncertainty breeds self-censorship and performative behaviour. Rather than spaces for genuine dialogue, platforms risk becoming a hall of mirrors which smooth away disagreement in favour of whatever the group already accepts. Nuance disappears as individuals trade the complexity of a real identity for one simple enough to gain widespread acceptance.
This problem embeds further as users internalise the collective's values. They imitate so often that the lines blur between their own beliefs and the group's. With the spectral priest, each digital community consolidates a 'regime of truth' with its own coded language, communication style and value system. This fosters a social hive mind which, particularly for young people, can become dangerous.
An under-16 ban treats the symptom rather than the cause because it fails to acknowledge that the platform architecture makes disclosure feel involuntary, and tribal loyalty rewarding
An under-16 ban, however well-intentioned, treats the symptom rather than the cause. It assumes removing young users removes the risk but fails to acknowledge that the platform architecture makes disclosure feel involuntary, and tribal loyalty rewarding. If the design is the problem, these effects won't vanish on a person's 16th birthday. They will continue to manifest as rising political extremism, shrinking tolerance, and a more fractured society.
Andy Burnham's new government has now inherited this policy, blind spot included. A ban can build a temporary wall. It can't extinguish the pull that keeps drawing people back toward the platform.
Westminster must reckon with what tech firms built these platforms to do: instil an insatiable appetite for self-disclosure. As long as social media keeps asking 'what's on your mind?', teenagers will keep answering, ban or no ban.
