Britain is following Australia’s lead with a social media ban for under-16s, but the political backlash from the Right has taken the campaign’s architect by surprise. Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist and author of The Anxious Generation, warned that the UK’s approach risks becoming a “nightmare for free speech” if it focuses on content rather than design.
In a wide-ranging interview with UnHerd’s Freddie Sayers, Haidt acknowledged that many on the Right are “increasingly anxious” that the measures pose a threat to freedom of expression. The reason, he said, is unique to Britain. “Here in the UK, it’s different. Why? Well, I think it’s because here you’ve had governments for many years now arresting people in mass numbers for tweets,” Haidt argued. “We are in the country that gave us our liberal principles, the country that gave us John Stuart Mill. Your government has laws that are cracking down on what people say on content, and that is really a bad thing.”
“Jonathan Haidt warns UK's social media ban risks free speech if it targets content, urging design-based solutions instead.”
Haidt, whose book has been credited with driving bans on smartphones in schools and restrictions on porn and social media across the Western world, said the campaign had been “bipartisan almost everywhere” except Britain. He insisted that the real solution lies not in policing what children see, but in redesigning the platforms themselves. “What I’m talking about are design-based solutions. When you say: here are the platform features that are causing the threats to children,” he said.
The psychologist drew a sharp distinction between content-focused regulation, which he called “a problem”, and architectural changes that do not require the government to judge speech. “Whenever people think about regulation, their mind jumps to ‘the government is going to judge speech and decide if this passes, or this does not’. Now that is a nightmare for free speech,” he said. “That’s something that we almost never see in the US, because that is so clearly contrary to the First Amendment. But you don’t have the First Amendment here.”
Haidt’s intervention comes as the UK prepares to implement its own ban, a move that has sparked a fierce debate over whether the cure for childhood anxiety might be worse than the disease. For the Right, the question remains: can you protect children without handing the state a key to the digital door?