There is rarely much to commend Keir Starmer for. But on Monday he blocked an amendment to the schools bill which would have required all social media companies to ban under-16s from using their products. In voting against this legislation, MPs have preserved anonymity on the internet, resisted further state powers over what we see online and avoided caving in to a moral panic gripping Westminster.

I don’t want to lavish too much praise on the Prime Minister just yet. The sweeping powers brought in by the Online Safety Act already censor most of online life. Unless you provide companies like Substack and X with identification, you aren’t able to watch speeches in parliament about grooming gangs or content which refers to ‘illegal immigration and people smuggling’. We may soon live in a world in which 16-year-olds will have the vote but won’t be permitted to research the issues on which they’re voting. Meanwhile, the government has just launched a consultation on whether to ban social media for under-16s, so the vote which Labour just whipped against may well soon become government policy anyway.

I was ten when Instagram launched and I have to confess that much of the scaremongering about these apps seems vastly overblown.

I was ten when Instagram launched and I have to confess that much of the scaremongering about these apps seems vastly overblown.

Many advocating for a ban point to the impact social media had on their own childhood. I was ten when Instagram launched. My adolescence was firmly characterised by Tumblr, Snapchat and the rise of Facebook. And I have to confess that much of the scaremongering about these apps seems vastly overblown. I saw no evidence to suggest that my peers who spent a lot of time on their phones suffered any more than........

© The Spectator