Fix the Product

Every generation has worried about what children consume. Today, the concern is social media. Governments across the world are responding with proposals to ban children below a certain age from accessing social media platforms. While politically appealing, age bans risk becoming another easy headline that avoids the harder question: why are digital products deliberately designed to keep children hooked?

The real problem is not merely who uses social media but how social media is built. Platforms rely on algorithms that reward endless scrolling, autoplay videos, infinite feeds, streaks, notifications and dopamine-driven engagement. These features are not accidental; they are engineered to maximise screen time because attention translates into advertising revenue. In such a system, children become products rather than users.

Age restrictions are also easier to announce than to enforce. Children routinely bypass age verification using fake birth dates or their parents' accounts. The result is a false sense of security while the addictive architecture remains untouched. It is like putting an age limit on cigarettes but allowing manufacturers to make them even more addictive.

The better solution is to regulate technology companies the way society regulates other industries whose products can cause harm. If toy makers, pharmaceutical firms and automobile manufacturers can be held liable for unsafe designs, social media companies should also face product-liability standards. Platforms must be required to eliminate manipulative design features, offer child-safe defaults, ensure algorithmic transparency and undergo independent safety audits. Profit cannot remain the sole measure of digital innovation.

Parents and schools certainly have a role in teaching digital literacy, but expecting families alone to outsmart billion-dollar behavioural engineering is unrealistic. Personal responsibility cannot substitute corporate accountability.

Children deserve protection, but protection must begin where the harm is created. The debate should move beyond policing children's birthdays to regulating products intentionally designed to capture young minds. Until governments confront the business model that rewards addiction, age bans will remain little more than symbolic politics—treating the symptom while leaving the disease untouched.