Estonia is the rare EU country opposing child social media bans

As the ban on social media for children spreads across Europe and beyond, Estonia is not coping. On Friday, the country’s education minister said the bans would not “really solve the problems”, while warning that children would find a way regardless.

Although companies like Meta would like you to believe it’s a fairy tale, social media addiction is associated with tangible negative impacts on children. Studies show its harms range from depression and anxiety to lack of sleep and obesity. (The latter comes from all the ads targeting junk food.) On the other hand, teens can find community and support through social media.

A growing number of countries have looked at the negative data and concluded that the answer is to ban children from social media altogether. Although the age limit varies, laws have been proposed or enacted in Australia, Greece, France, Austria, Spain, Indonesia, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, and Denmark, to name a few.

The Estonian Minister of Education believes that these countries are approaching the very real problem from the wrong angle. “For me, the way to approach this problem is not to blame children for this harm and to start self-regulating,” Kristina Kallas said at a Politico forum in Barcelona. She added that “children will very quickly find ways to move around and use social networks.”

Instead, she said the responsibility lies with governments and businesses. “Europe is pretending to be weak in the face of big American and international companies,” she added. But she called it a “pretext,” challenging the EU to “actually take this power and start regulating big American companies.”

To be honest, the EU regulates the tech industry more effectively than anywhere else in the world. But the point about social prohibitions against children remains valid.

Another argument against bans is that they are a short walk between a well-intentioned erosion and a more sinister erosion of fundamental freedoms. In February, France suggested that the next logical step after banning social media for under-15s would be to tackle VPNs. After all, once the ban is passed, you need to enforce it – and that may mean removing the tools kids might use to get around it.