Don’t ban teenagers from social media

切勿禁止青少年使用社交媒体

Feb 12, 2026 08:07 AM

2026年2月12日 上午08:07

People don’t agree on much these days. But one thing brings them together, whatever their politics: the idea that, because social media harm children and teenagers, they should be banned from using them. In December Australia stopped under-16s from having accounts on platforms including Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. A dozen countries, including Britain and Spain, are now toying with the idea; so are legislators in many American states. More than 70% of Britons support kicking under-16s off such sites, as do two-thirds of Americans. The problem is, bans will do more harm than good.

如今人们能达成共识的事情寥寥无几。但有一件事超越了政治立场，将人们凝聚在一起：鉴于社交媒体对儿童和青少年造成伤害，应当禁止他们使用。去年12月，澳大利亚禁止16岁以下用户在Facebook、Instagram和TikTok等平台注册账号。包括英国和西班牙在内的十多个国家正在考虑类似措施；美国多州立法者也跃跃欲试。超过70%的英国民众支持将16岁以下用户清出这类平台，美国亦有三分之二民众持相同观点。问题在于：禁令带来的弊端将远超其益处。

The proposals arise from an understandable desire to keep youngsters safe and healthy. Parents have been shaken by tragedies in which social media have played a role, of children being tricked into sharing explicit pictures of themselves, or taking their own lives after algorithms shovelled them content about self-harm. Along with those shocking cases comes a second, more general worry: that social media might be damaging children as a group, making them reserved, lonely and anxious. People are desperate to understand why today’s youngsters seem unhappier than the generations that came before.

这些提案源于保护青少年安全健康的初衷，其情可悯。社交媒体引发的悲剧令家长胆战心惊——儿童被诱骗分享自己的裸露照片，或因算法不断推送自残内容而选择结束生命。除却这些骇人案例，更普遍的忧虑在于：社交媒体可能正系统性侵蚀青少年群体，使他们变得孤僻、焦虑且充满疏离感。人们迫切想弄明白，为何当代年轻人似乎比过往世代更加不快乐。

Even parents who are confident they can keep their children from serious harm fret that their offspring are wasting hours scrolling through mindless memes. They would like to stop them, but fear that their kids will suffer if they are the only members of their class not on the apps. Blanket bans appear to offer an easy answer—and politicians are only too happy to seize on a measure that, for once, pleases voters from all parties.

即便是自信能保护孩子免受严重伤害的家长，也忧心子女终日滑动屏幕沉溺于无意义的网络迷因。他们渴望制止这种行为，又担心若自家孩子成为班级里唯一被禁用社交软件的人，将遭受孤立。全面禁令看似提供了便捷的解决方案——而政客们更是乐得抓住这个难得能让各党派选民都满意的措施。

Yet policymakers should reconsider. The question of whether social media are causing mass harm is far from settled. Growing evidence suggests they are bad for at least some children. But, as we explain this week·, the claim that social media cause great damage to the mental health of young people as a whole has only limited evidence. And even if you wanted to ban social media as a precaution pending conclusive findings, such measures threaten to be counterproductive.

然而，政策制定者应当重新审视这一问题。社交媒体是否正在造成大规模伤害，这个问题远未尘埃落定。越来越多的证据表明，它们至少对部分儿童有害。但正如我们本周所阐释的，关于社交媒体对年轻人整体心理健康造成严重损害的说法，证据尚不充分。即便你出于预防考虑，希望在确凿结论出炉前禁止社交媒体，此类措施也可能适得其反。

One problem is that enforcing bans is hard; teenagers in Australia are finding ingenious ways to get round them, by scrunching up their faces to look older. Defining social media is hard, too. Australia has not banned young teenagers from messaging apps such as WhatsApp, or from multiplayer online games, because that would have seemed too draconian; scourges such as cyberbullying will doubtless continue on these. Kids barred from mainstream sites could flock to obscure ones, and fall victim to predators there. Children who evade the blocks may be less likely to tell adults if they find something horrid, for fear of being told off.

问题在于，禁令的落实充满挑战。澳大利亚的青少年们想出妙招绕开限制，他们会做表情挤眉弄眼，让自己看起来更成熟。此外，对社交媒体进行清晰界定也十分棘手。政府并未让低龄青少年彻底告别WhatsApp之类的即时通讯应用或多人在线游戏，若这么做可能显得过于严苛。然而，网络霸凌等网络毒瘤必定会在这些平台上继续横行。被主要网站挡在外面未成年人或许会涌向默默无闻的平台，进而成为网络捕食者的爪下玩物。那些逃避限制溜进去的小孩如果看到什么不堪入目的事物，反而不太可能向大人报告，深怕自己挨批。

Higher age limits may just delay problems until youngsters are 16, when they will suddenly gain full access to social sites that they do not have much experience of using. And all the while, higher age limits for social media may provide a false sense of security. It is for all these reasons that bans are often opposed by child-protection groups.

即使提高社交媒体年龄限制，问题可能只是延迟至青少年16岁时爆发——届时他们将突然获得对使用经验尚浅的社媒平台完全访问权。更高的年龄门槛反而可能营造虚假安全感，正因如此，这类禁令常遭儿童保护团体反对。

Moreover, the proponents of bans ignore how they would deprive children of the benefits of social media. They are a blessing to children who feel isolated: perhaps because of their location, their sexuality, or because their brains work differently from those of others. Social media can broaden young minds, giving children from all backgrounds a window onto fresh places and people. Like it or not, social sites are now one of the main ways children obtain information (as well as misinformation) about current affairs. It used to be easy for youngsters to pick up their parents’ printed newspapers. They sat through news bulletins aired before or after their favourite shows. Those days are no more.

此外，禁网令的支持者们忽视了社交媒体对孩子的利处。对于那些因地理位置、性取向或思维方式与众不同而感到孤独的孩子来说，社交媒体是一种福音。它能开阔青少年的视野，为不同背景的孩子打开一扇了解新地方、认识新朋友的窗口。不管你喜不喜欢，社交网站现在都是孩子们获取（也是误获）时事信息的主要途径之一。过去，孩子们能轻易拿起父母订阅的报纸翻阅，也会耐着性子看完心爱节目前后插播的新闻。那样的日子已经一去不复返了。

Teenagers who are turfed off TikTok will not instantly begin climbing trees or poring over books. Many will slump for longer in front of games consoles and streaming services. One reason they spend so many hours online is that parents long ago stopped letting them hang around outside with friends. Having chased them indoors, adults should now think twice about placing further prohibitions on their free time.

青少年即便被强行驱离抖音，也不会瞬间就投身户外攀树或沉浸于书海。他们中的许多人反倒会在游戏主机和流媒体服务前消磨更久时光。这些年轻人在线上花费如此多时间，部分原因在于父母早已不再允许他们与朋友在外游荡。既然大人们当初将孩子们赶回了室内，如今便应三思而后行，避免对他们的闲暇时光施加更多限制。

What to do? Rather than raise age limits, regulators should redouble efforts to make social sites more suitable for teens. Ideally they would force web firms to cough up more data on how teenagers use their products—the better to help researchers measure harms, and come up with ways to prevent them. They should tell tech giants to rethink features that are keeping kids online longer than is healthy, such as interfaces that permit endless scrolling and videos that play without prompting. They should demand sterner moderation of the content being served up to young users. This may require greater efforts to verify the age of social-media users, in order to work out which ones must surf with guardrails and which are adults who may go without.

应该怎么办？与其提高年龄限制，不如加倍努力使社交网站更适合青少年使用。理想情况下，监管机构应强制网络公司提供更多关于青少年如何使用其产品的数据，以便帮助研究人员更好地衡量危害并找出预防方法。他们应要求科技巨头重新设计那些让未成年人过度沉迷的功能，例如允许无限滚动浏览的界面和自动播放的视频。监管机构还应要求加强对向年轻用户推送的内容的审核。这可能需要进行更大努力来验证社交媒体用户的年龄，以确定哪些用户需要受到保护，哪些是成年人可以自由浏览。

Some observers find these ideas laughable. One reason people demand higher age limits is that they believe social apps cannot be made safer. That ignores the direction of travel. America is gearing up for a series of blockbuster trials—years in the making—that will finally give people who say they were harmed by sites as children a chance to make their case in court. The European Union has just issued a preliminary ruling that features of TikTok’s design are “addictive” and threatened fines if it doesn’t change. Lately, many of the big social apps have been cajoled into creating “teen” accounts that come with additional safeguards. These things will not solve every single worry. But all of them are progress of a sort.

一些观察家认为这些观点颇为可笑。人们要求提高年龄限制的一个原因是，他们认为社交应用无法变得更安全。这种看法忽视了行业的发展趋势。美国正筹备一系列酝酿多年的大规模诉讼，这将让那些声称童年时期因社交网站受到伤害的人首次有机会在法庭上陈述案情。欧盟刚发布初步裁决，认定TikTok的设计功能具有‘成瘾性’，并威胁若不整改将处以罚款。近期，多家大型社交应用已被劝服推出附带额外保护措施的‘青少年’账户。这些举措虽不能解决所有担忧，但都标志着某种程度的进步。

Teens, screens and memes

青少年、屏幕与网络迷因

Politicians say their social-media bans are the only responsible option. In fact, they look like a way of ducking the care children deserve. If regulators cannot find ways to tame social media—now over two decades old—what hope is there to let children use novel tools such as artificial intelligence? Youngsters have a right to share in new technologies. Adults must seek to make their time online as safe and as rewarding as possible. ■

政客们宣称社交媒体禁令是唯一负责任的选择。实际上，这更像是逃避本应给予未成年人的关怀责任。如果监管部门连已存在二十余年的社交媒体都无法有效规制，又如何能放心让孩子使用人工智能这类新兴工具？青少年有权享受新技术带来的福祉，成年人则必须全力确保他们的网络体验既安全又富有价值。■