- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
Under-16s will be banned from using social media, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced.
Starmer says social media is making children unhappy, making it easier for bullies to abuse children, and is “designed to be addictive”. A ban would give children more time, security, and more freedom to grow up - as well as more opportunities, he adds.
“That is all any parent wants. They want to know that Britain will be better for their children, that they will get a fair chance,” the PM says in a speech in Downing Street.
Starmer adds that the government is “not prepared to compromise” on the safety and happiness of children - and that includes in the regulation and enforcement of this ban. He says the government has listened to and learned from countries like Australia, where a similar ban has already been introduced.
Except the number cited isn’t for social media posts. It’s all arrests under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988, which covers far more than social media (as you can probably guess, given social media didn’t even exist in 1988.)
That includes arrests for threatening phonecalls, sharing indecent images (child porn and the like - you lot who bang on about Epstein all the time are meant to be against that, right?) - and not only on social media - stalking and harrasment adjacent offenses like nuisance calling, and a whole host of other offences completely unrelated to social media.
In other words, it’s complete bollocks. And all from one woeful newspaper ‘story’. Congratulations for providing an excellent example of how one right-wing rag with an agenda can confect a story, then have it cited by a load of other ‘sources’ that don’t do anything beyond cutting and pasting the original lie, and then suddenly you’ve made a whole new fact.
Fair enough. The sources I cited aren’t exactly going above and beyond to prove the claim of 30 people arrested per day by linking to any raw data sources, or even claiming they themselves reviewed the arrest data. I’d like to at least see a day’s worth of examples of people who were arrested and why. It’s quite possible it would mostly be threats of violence and other legitimate reasons for arrests like you stated.
Unfortunately, the data doesn’t appear to be collected in a systematic way across the whole country, but one police force - West Yorkshire Police - does have data going back long enough for a trend, at least for the arrests on the Communications Act.
For West Yorkshire Police, the arrests under the Communications Act are pretty much constant from 2008 (around 200) to 2024 (actually a little lower, 152).
Given the changes in social media penetration over that time (things like the iPhone and Twitter barely even existed in 2008,) for the rate of arrests to have remained constant throughout I would suggest strongly indicates that there is a very strong element of “absolutely nothing to do with social media” in those numbers The Times quoted.
The numbers for the Malicious Communications Act are less easy to parse, because they don’t go back far enough, and also they show a massive drop in the last 6 years.
All of this of course could be slightly moot - because in 2023, a new act (the Online Safety Act) was passed which specifically relates to “arresting people for their social media posts” [TM Musk et al].
In 2024, West Yorkshire Police made 5 (five! Count them! Hell, you could invite them all round to your house for dinner) arrests under the OSA.
“Thousands” of people are categorically not being arrested for their social media posts in the UK every year. Or even every decade.