Comment by hopelite
6 hours ago
What is it about this 16 y/o cutoff that seems to be the focus everywhere? Why not 18?
It almost seems like this will make SM attractive by making it a kind of forbidden fruit and/or a social standing status indicator for impressionable, malleable minded, underdeveloped minds of teens seeking to feel like adults.
In other words, if I didn’t know any better, I would have guessed that it might actually be the likes of Facebook pushing these controls internationally (not the least because they seem so coordinated all across the planet) in order to manipulate target users into coveting having a fb/SM account again.
Tell me you think Facebook, the same Facebook that was caught running uncontrolled and illegal psychological manipulation testing on its users, would not do such a thing!
Why 18? Why not 21, or 26?
I agree with you that this would create a forbidden fruit, and a combination of social media becoming more desirable to under-16yo and teenagers binging social media as soon as they become 16. But the solution to that is to push the age limit down, not up. 14 or 12 would be much more reasonable ages. That gives parents a clear cutoff when their kids have to be ready for social media, and prevents bans in the phase where teens are most rebellious
This was an argument that was used to not ban smoking for kids in the UK back in the day. From the parliment debate...
> [banning smoking would] afford a direct encouragement to children to smoke. Most boys of a tender age who might be seen smoking in public places did so, not because of any attachment to tobacco, but because they considered it a practice in advance of their years, and something moreover which their elders told them not to do, affording them, therefore, the added pleasure of disobedience which was so dear to boys of their age.
https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1908-10-13/debates/6aa...
Perhaps it does make it cooler - but undoubtedly the restrictions reduced availability and reduced the number of children being addicted.
As for the actual age cut-off, it's always going to be fairly arbitrary, or a 'balanced judgement'.
You think Meta secretly wanted to remove 4.7m Australian users while saying:
> "We call on the Australian government to engage with industry constructively to find a better way forward, such as incentivising all of industry to raise the standard in providing safe, privacy-preserving, age-appropriate experiences online, instead of blanket bans,"
because ultimately they think it will attract more users to their platforms?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-15/social-media-ban-data...
https://www.9news.com.au/national/australia-social-media-ban...
> What is it about this 16 y/o cutoff that seems to be the focus everywhere? Why not 18?
Some studies have found that puberty is the peak problematic age for people to be on social media and 16 is the rough point by which mostly this is finished. There is a book, "The Anxious Generation" that covers this pretty well.
> uncontrolled and illegal psychological manipulation testing on its users
Facebook is so uncool to the youth the only idea they could come up with to make kids want to be on it again was to "ban" it.
In the UK, 16 is the age of consent for medical treatments, driving licenses, joining the armed forces, etc, so it's generally the age when a child can lawfully make many of their own decisions.
You need to be 15 years and 9 months to apply for a provisional driving licence, but 17 to drive a car, in most cases, though I think there's an exception for some disabled people. You need to be 13 to give consent for processing of personal data. The age of criminal responsibility is 10 in England and Wales, but higher in Scotland, I think. It used to be 16 for getting married, with parents' consent (or without, in Scotland), but I think that's been raised. You can leave school on the last Friday of June in the school year (Sep-Aug) in which you turn 16, or something like that. There are lots of different age limits. I think the real answer to "Why 16?" is basically "Why not?".