Findings from our recent survey suggests the conversation around children, social media, and online safety is far more complicated than the headlines often imply.
Drawing on responses from 803 professionals working across education, safeguarding, youth support and child protection roles, the findings reveal a sector wrestling with deep concern about the impact of social media on children and young people, combined with significant doubt that bans will meaningfully address the problem.
The analysis was conducted by Professor Andy Phippen (Professor of Digital Rights at Bournemouth University).
Rising Concern About Children Using Social Media
At face value, the survey appears to show strong support for restrictions on social media access for under-16s. Many respondents spoke openly about the emotional and developmental risks they see in their day-to-day work, from addictive platform design and compulsive engagement systems to harmful content, emotional wellbeing concerns, and the growing sense that existing safeguards are struggling to keep pace.
For many professionals, there is a clear feeling that the current environment is not working for children and young people with the level of concern highlighted throughout being unmistakably high. But beneath that headline support for restrictions lies a far more nuanced and, at times, contradictory picture.
Will Bans Be Effective?
While many respondents backed the idea of social media bans or tighter restrictions, large numbers simultaneously questioned whether such measures could ever truly work in practice.
Professionals frequently pointed to the ease with which young people may bypass restrictions through VPNs, fake accounts, older siblings’ devices, hidden profiles, or migration to less visible platforms. Others worried that outright bans could simply push activity further into unregulated spaces, making it harder for parents, schools, and safeguarding professionals to maintain visibility over children’s online lives.
What the survey reveals is not a straightforward endorsement of prohibition, but a much broader sense of frustration and unease about children’s online activity. In many cases, support for restrictions appears less about confidence in bans as a solution and more about a desire for visible intervention.
Acknowledgement Around Limitations
That interpretation becomes even clearer when looking at the wider patterns in the data. Some of the strongest relationships in the survey were not between support for bans and belief in their effectiveness, but between support for bans and scepticism about whether they could actually be enforced.
In other words, many professionals appeared to support restrictions while fully recognising their limitations. The findings suggest that, for some, restrictions are viewed as precautionary rather than transformational i.e. an attempt to delay exposure, establish boundaries, or create breathing space while wider solutions are developed.
Demand for Systemic Change
What respondents agreed with far more consistently was support for broader systemic interventions. Professionals repeatedly highlighted the need for stronger regulation of platforms, age-appropriate design standards, clearer parental support, better digital literacy education, and restrictions on persuasive or addictive platform features.
Across the qualitative responses, many located the root of the problem not simply in children’s access to social media, but in the architecture of platforms themselves.
Respondents referred to algorithmic amplification, endless scrolling, dopamine-driven engagement loops, and commercial systems designed to maximise attention and time spent online. There was a recurring sense that children are navigating digital spaces built around engagement incentives that are fundamentally misaligned with their developmental needs.
At the same time, professionals acknowledged that responsibility does not sit solely with technology companies. Parenting pressures, peer expectations, school responsibilities, and wider social norms were all recognised as shaping young people’s online experiences.
Online Safety is a System Wide Challenge
The survey suggests that professionals increasingly see online harms as part of a wider socio-technical ecosystem rather than a simple issue of access alone.
The responses also reveal that there is no singular professional consensus. Some respondents strongly favoured prohibitionist approaches, others were deeply sceptical of bans altogether, while a large proportion occupied a more ambivalent middle ground, concerned about harms, uncertain about solutions, and unconvinced that any single intervention is likely to resolve the issue on its own.
Ultimately, the findings challenge simplistic narratives that “professionals support social media bans”.
A Problem with Uncertainty
What emerges instead is a picture of a sector grappling with uncertainty, complexity, and a growing concern in how society governs children’s digital lives.
Professionals appear caught between concern for children’s wellbeing, recognition of the structural nature of online harms, pressure for decisive action, and an awareness that prohibition alone is unlikely to offer a complete or lasting solution.
Rather than presenting bans as a definitive answer, the survey points towards a growing belief that online safety requires systemic change across platforms, policy, education, and parenting.
To read our summary response to the consultation, you can access the full breakdown here.
