Social media bans fail Black youth as a long-term solution

Children & Families Race in Public Policy Social Equity & Inclusion

儿童和家庭在公共政策中的竞赛 社会公平与包容

On July 21, France became the first country in the European Union to ban social media for children under 15 , but the United Kingdom is already a step ahead.

7月21日，法国成为欧盟第一个禁止15岁以下儿童使用社交媒体的国家，但英国已经领先一步。

When former Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced in June that the U.K. would bar youth under 16 from social media platforms beginning in 2027, he framed it as a chance to “set a new normal for future generations” —a line in the sand, he said, to give kids “their childhood back.” The decision followed a public comment period where more than 90% of public respondents backed the idea.

当前首相凯尔·斯塔默 (Keir Starmer) 在 6 月宣布英国将从 2027 年开始禁止 16 岁以下青少年使用社交媒体平台时，他将其视为“为子孙后代设定新常态”的机会——他说，这是让孩子们“重获童年”的一条底线。该决定是在公众意见征询期做出的，超过 90% 的公众受访者支持这一想法。

This is unsurprising as parents are exhausted.

这并不奇怪，因为父母已经筋疲力尽了。

Teachers describe classrooms hollowed out by phones, and the data on youth mental health is legitimately concerning.

教师们描述了被手机掏空的教室，有关青少年心理健康的数据也理所当然地令人担忧。

While France, the U.K., and other countries are moving quickly on banning social media use among teens, the United States has yet to institute an outright social media ban, despite several states enacting their own versions of restrictive use.

尽管法国、英国和其他国家正在迅速采取行动，禁止青少年使用社交媒体，但美国尚未实施彻底的社交媒体禁令，尽管有几个州颁布了自己的限制性使用版本。

At least 20 U.S. states have enacted laws restricting minors’ social media access and nine have gone as far as proposing outright bans or parental-consent mandates .

美国至少有 20 个州颁布了限制未成年人访问社交媒体的法律，其中 9 个州甚至提议彻底禁止或征得家长同意。

Courts have blocked laws in Arkansas and Ohio and temporarily halted others in California, Florida, and Georgia—nearly all on First Amendment grounds.

法院已经阻止了阿肯色州和俄亥俄州的法律，并暂时停止了加利福尼亚州、佛罗里达州和佐治亚州的其他法律——几乎所有这些法律都是以第一修正案为由。

Massachusetts lawmakers, who passed an under-14 ban in April, added language specifically to prevent parents from accessing LGBTQ+ teens’ data, an amendment that exists only because organizations warned the original bill would put vulnerable kids at greater risk.

马萨诸塞州立法者于 4 月通过了一项 14 岁以下儿童禁令，专门添加了禁止家长获取 LGBTQ+ 青少年数据的措辞，这项修正案之所以存在，只是因为组织警告称，最初的法案将使弱势儿童面临更大的风险。

Communities are understandably looking to elected officials to regulate, but the instinct to move toward hyper-restrictions may be misguided, especially in the case of marginalized youth.

社区希望民选官员进行监管是可以理解的，但过度限制的本能可能会被误导，特别是对于边缘化的年轻人来说。

The bans in the U.K. and France, and the roughly two dozen similar proposals moving through U.S. state legislatures, treat access as the disease rather than a symptom of platforms built to maximize engagement at any cost.

英国和法国的禁令，以及美国州立法机构通过的大约两打类似提案，都将访问视为一种疾病，而不是不惜一切代价最大限度地提高参与度而建立的平台的症状。

That diagnosis influences lawmakers to act without confronting the design features and business models of social media platforms, as well as how different groups of young people experience technology in distinct ways.

这种诊断影响立法者采取行动，而无需面对社交媒体平台的设计特征和商业模式，以及不同群体的年轻人如何以不同的方式体验技术。

For a meaningful share of teenagers, public policies that are not well thought out on their cultural implications could significantly weaken their connections to primary information infrastructure, including news, community, and identity-building.

对于相当一部分青少年来说，没有充分考虑其文化影响的公共政策可能会严重削弱他们与主要信息基础设施（包括新闻、社区和身份建设）的联系。

Black youth, in fact, are positioned to lose the most when lawmakers write broad policies without considering the diversity among youth.

事实上，当立法者制定广泛的政策而不考虑青年的多样性时，黑人青年可能会遭受最大的损失。

Amnesty International’s U.K. office put the critique on social media bans succinctly: The ban is the “right diagnosis but the wrong prescription.” The organization’s research has documented how platforms’ own recommendation systems attract young users into harmful content loops.

国际特赦组织英国办事处简洁地批评了社交媒体禁令：该禁令是“正确的诊断，但错误的处方”。该组织的研究记录了平台自身的推荐系统如何吸引年轻用户进入有害内容循环。

Most of the recent global wave, from Australia to Indonesia to France and the U.K., has converged in the same place: restricting access by age.

最近的全球浪潮，从澳大利亚到印度尼西亚，再到法国和英国，大部分都集中在同一个地方：按年龄限制访问。

However, two efforts point toward a more nuanced alternative.

然而，有两项努力指向了一种更微妙的替代方案。

Efforts to engage in age verification, meanwhile, come with their own well-documented risks.

与此同时，进行年龄验证的努力也带来了有据可查的风险。

To verify a user’s age, platforms typically require a government-issued ID or biometric data.

为了验证用户的年龄，平台通常需要政府颁发的身份证件或生物识别数据。

This approach risks exposing sensitive information in breaches and raises a real question of whether it protects children at all, since critics note it can be circumvented with a VPN—a tool that masks a user’s location and identity online—to appear as an adult or as someone accessing a platform from a different country, bypassing age restrictions.

这种方法存在泄露敏感信息的风险，并引发了一个真正的问题：它是否能保护儿童，因为批评者指出，可以通过 VPN（一种在网上掩盖用户位置和身份的工具）绕过该方法，以成人或来自不同国家/地区访问平台的人的身份出现，从而绕过年龄限制。

Screens and social media do carry demonstrated risk to youth, especially for younger children.

屏幕和社交媒体确实对青少年，尤其是年幼的孩子存在明显的风险。

Pew Research Center’s newest data on teens confirms that more than a third of teenage TikTok users say the platform hurts their sleep, and nearly as many say it hurts their productivity.

皮尤研究中心关于青少年的最新数据证实，超过三分之一的青少年 TikTok 用户表示该平台损害了他们的睡眠，几乎同样多的人表示它损害了他们的工作效率。

But the same body of research complicates the case for a blanket ban, particularly for Black teens, who use these platforms in distinct ways and, by some measures, benefit from them differently than other youth.

但同一研究机构使全面禁止的情况变得复杂化，特别是对于黑人青少年来说，他们以不同的方式使用这些平台，并且从某些方面来看，他们从这些平台中受益与其他年轻人不同。

For example, Black teens are more likely than their white and Hispanic peers to use TikTok, and they consistently stand out across TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat in one respect: turning to these platforms for news and other public information more often than their peers do.

例如，黑人青少年比白人和西班牙裔同龄人更有可能使用 TikTok，而且他们在某一方面始终在 TikTok、Instagram 和 Snapchat 中脱颖而出：比同龄人更频繁地转向这些平台获取新闻和其他公共信息。

Roughly 60% of Black teen TikTok users rely on the platform for information about what’s happening in the world.

大约 60% 的黑人青少年 TikTok 用户依赖该平台获取有关世界上正在发生的事情的信息。

This pattern does not hold nearly as strongly for white teens.

这种模式对于白人青少年来说并不那么强烈。

Pew’s research has also found that Black teens are considerably more likely than their peers to say social media makes them feel accepted and supported through hard times.

皮尤的研究还发现，黑人青少年比同龄人更有可能表示社交媒体让他们在困难时期感到被接受和支持。

Twenty-six percent say platforms make them feel “a lot more accepted,” compared with 10% of white teens.

26% 的人表示平台让他们感觉“更容易被接受”，而白人青少年的这一比例为 10%。

These findings should bring new light to more mainstream discussions around young people and screens, especially the diversity that exists among teens more generally.

这些发现应该为围绕年轻人和屏幕的更主流的讨论带来新的曙光，尤其是青少年中普遍存在的多样性。

Young people, whose communities and interests are underserved by traditional local news outlets, perceive social media as an information outlet.

年轻人的社区和利益得不到当地传统新闻媒体的关注，他们将社交媒体视为一种信息渠道。

Social media also serves as a refuge for Black and other marginalized teens for whom “third spaces,” such as community centers, libraries , and after-school programs , have been thinned out by years of budget cuts.

社交媒体还成为黑人和其他边缘化青少年的避难所，对他们来说，社区中心、图书馆和课外活动等“第三空间”因多年的预算削减而变得越来越少。

Digital platforms have functioned as a primary source of news, a documented source of social support, and one of the few remaining low-cost avenues for community connection available to them.

数字平台已成为新闻的主要来源、有记录的社会支持来源，以及为数不多的低成本社区联系途径之一。

Proponents of bans often argue that removing social media access will free young people from harmful content, restore their attention, and return them to in-person connection.

禁令的支持者经常认为，取消社交媒体访问将使年轻人免受有害内容的影响，恢复他们的注意力，并使他们回归面对面的联系。

For some youth, that may be true, but for a meaningful number of Black youths, research consistently shows higher rates of social media use and a reliance on it for purposes different from others, making the impacts of wholesale policies more complicated for them.

对于一些年轻人来说，这可能是真的，但对于相当数量的黑人年轻人来说，研究一致表明社交媒体的使用率较高，并且出于与其他人不同的目的而依赖社交媒体，这使得批发政策对他们的影响更加复杂。

Removing access without replacing what these spaces provide may deepen existing inequities in how young people access information, support, and connection.

在不取代这些空间提供的内容的情况下取消访问可能会加深年轻人在获取信息、支持和联系方面现有的不平等。

While Black teens’ use of social media might paint a different picture than mainstream perceptions suggest, it should also inform the approaches of policymakers seeking to address deepening concerns about the effects of technology.

虽然黑人青少年对社交媒体的使用可能描绘出与主流看法不同的景象，但它也应该为政策制定者寻求解决对技术影响日益加深的担忧的方法提供参考。

First, platform design should be the focus of regulation.

首先，平台设计应成为监管的重点。

Amnesty International has called for enforceable restrictions on specific technical features that its research links to harm: hyper-personalized recommendation systems, autoplay, infinite scroll, and profiling-by-default.

国际特赦组织呼吁对其研究认为有害的特定技术功能实施强制限制：超个性化推荐系统、自动播放、无限滚动和默认分析。

This approach targets the mechanisms the evidence actually implicates.

这种方法针对证据实际暗示的机制。

California’s Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act moves in a similar direction, regulating algorithmic “addictive feeds” for minors rather than barring accounts outright and offering an early model worth watching as it works through litigation.

加州的《保护我们的孩子免受社交媒体成瘾法案》也朝着类似的方向发展，监管未成年人的算法“成瘾信息”，而不是彻底禁止账户，并提供了一个值得关注的早期模式，因为它通过诉讼发挥作用。

Second, a serious long-term plan also requires investment in the physical alternatives that bans assume already exist.

其次，一项严肃的长期计划还需要对禁令假设已经存在的实体替代品进行投资。

The unspoken premise behind banning youth from social media is that teens have somewhere else to go or another low-friction way to find people who share their interests.

禁止青少年使用社交媒体背后不言而喻的前提是，青少年有其他地方可去，或者有其他低摩擦的方式来寻找与他们有共同兴趣的人。

In much of the U.S., that premise doesn’t always hold true for Black youth.

在美国大部分地区，这一前提并不总是适用于黑人青年。

In spring and summer 2026, so-called “teen takeovers”—large groups of Black and brown youth converging on malls and parks after organizing over social media—have prompted curfews and arrests in cities including Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Orlando.

2026 年春夏，所谓的“青少年接管”——大批黑人和棕色人种青年通过社交媒体组织起来，聚集在购物中心和公园——导致华盛顿特区、芝加哥和奥兰多等城市实施宵禁和逮捕。

At a D.C. city council hearing on the issue, youth advocate organizations argued that such punitive responses criminalize ordinary teenage sociability rather than address its root cause: a shortage of safe, funded spaces for young people to gather.

在华盛顿特区市议会就此问题举行的听证会上，青年倡导组织认为，这种惩罚性措施将普通青少年的社交行为定为犯罪，而不是解决其根本原因：缺乏供年轻人聚集的安全、资金充足的空间。

Sustained investment in that infrastructure must be central to any long-term policy plan for youth development.

对基础设施的持续投资必须成为任何青年发展长期政策计划的核心。

Finally, governments need to build digital and AI literacies before the next moral panic arrives.

最后，政府需要在下一次道德恐慌到来之前培养数字和人工智能素养。

The 2026 Common Sense Media census finds that just over a third of kids can correctly identify that AI cannot distinguish true information from false, and that nearly half of families have never had a basic conversation about AI safety at home.

2026 年常识媒体普查发现，只有超过三分之一的孩子能够正确识别人工智能无法区分真假信息，并且近一半的家庭从未在家里进行过有关人工智能安全的基本对话。

Twelve percent of teens say they would consult an AI chatbot before a trusted adult on a question regarding their health or body, a figure that rises to 27% among daily users.

12% 的青少年表示，他们会在可信赖的成年人之前就有关其健康或身体的问题咨询人工智能聊天机器人，这一数字在日常用户中上升至 27%。

Given how deeply Black youth in particular rely on these tools for schoolwork, information, and social support, literacy and regulatory safeguards are critical.

鉴于黑人青年在学业、信息和社会支持方面尤其依赖这些工具，扫盲和监管保障至关重要。

Ultimately, this is an argument for embracing the concerns of young people, rather than excluding their experiences in policymaking.

归根结底，这是接受年轻人的担忧，而不是排除他们的政策制定经验的论点。

A human-centered technology ecosystem should be designed with young people in mind instead of penalizing them for the intentional actions of Big Tech companies.

以人为本的技术生态系统应该在设计时考虑到年轻人，而不是因为大型科技公司的故意行为而惩罚他们。

No country has yet built that ecosystem in full.

目前还没有国家完全建立起这个生态系统。

The European Union’s forthcoming Digital Fairness Act is expected to regulate addictive design patterns, personalization practices, and manipulative interface choices directly, rather than restricting who may use a platform at all.

欧盟即将出台的《数字公平法案》预计将直接监管令人上瘾的设计模式、个性化实践和可操纵的界面选择，而不是限制谁可以使用平台。

In the U.S., Vermont’s Age-Appropriate Design Code goes further than most other states: It bars surveillance-driven personalized feeds and compulsive-use design for minors without blocking access outright, a model that asserts that protection and access are not in tension.

在美国，佛蒙特州的适龄设计规范比大多数其他州走得更远：它禁止监视驱动的个性化信息流和针对未成年人的强迫使用设计，但不会完全阻止访问，这种模式断言保护和访问并不存在紧张关系。

Sonia Livingstone, who directs the London School of Economics’ Digital Futures for Children centre, put the underlying failure plainly: A ban, she has argued , is “an admission of failure that we cannot regulate companies, so we can only restrict children.” Neither the EU’s proposal nor Vermont’s law has been fully tested yet, and both will likely face the same legal and enforcement pressures.

伦敦经济学院儿童数字未来中心主任索尼娅·利文斯通 (Sonia Livingstone) 直言不讳地指出了潜在的失败：她认为，禁令是“承认我们无法监管公司的失败，因此我们只能限制儿童。”欧盟的提案和佛蒙特州的法律都尚未经过充分的测试，两者都可能面临相同的法律和执法压力。

However, design regulation alone will not build the necessary ecosystem.

然而，仅靠设计监管并不能建立必要的生态系统。

The structural forces that shape a young person’s digital life rarely stop at the screen, and the online and offline environments youth move through are interconnected policy domains.

塑造年轻人数字生活的结构性力量很少停留在屏幕上，年轻人所经历的线上和线下环境是相互关联的政策领域。

These environments are experienced continuously, and a young person underserved in online environments is typically underserved in the infrastructure of offline environments.

这些环境是不断经历的，在线环境中得不到充分服务的年轻人通常在离线环境的基础设施中也得不到充分服务。

To ensure that young people will be protected from the harms of excessive social media use, a long-term plan must adhere two tenets: Regulate the technical mechanisms that make platforms exploitative while also rebuilding physical infrastructure, from community centers to school-based support, that help young people thrive.

为了确保年轻人免受过度使用社交媒体的伤害，长期计划必须遵循两个原则：规范使平台具有剥削性的技术机制，同时重建从社区中心到学校支持的实体基础设施，以帮助年轻人茁壮成长。

Bans generate headlines because they look like decisive action.

禁令之所以成为头条新闻，是因为它们看起来像是果断的行动。

However, action aimed at the wrong lever redistributes the cost onto teens who have the least say and even fewer alternatives for constructive activities.

然而，针对错误杠杆的行动会将成本重新分配给那些最没有发言权、甚至更少的建设性活动选择的青少年。

For Black youth, this is increasingly important and should be central to this policy conversation.

对于黑人青年来说，这变得越来越重要，并且应该成为这次政策对话的核心。