Like the whimsical rattle of my car’s engine, the upcoming social media ban has largely been in the periphery of my awareness: I know it’s there, it’s possibly bad but I’m too lazy to look into it. Until this week, when it was announced that Reddit would be added to the list of platforms required to ban under-16s from its site, joining Facebook, Instagram, X and Snapchat. Also on the Grown-Ups Only list is a video-sharing site I just learned of called Kick that has aggressively specific branding of an energy drink/youth pastor combination. Oh to be young again!

For the less chronically online, Reddit is a social news aggregator that uses communities (“subreddits”) to organise content. There’s a subreddit for everything, from mainstream jokes to niche information requests. It’s largely text-based and doesn’t cap word counts so is ideal for self-proclaimed scribes, passionate ranters and people who remember when

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