In the latest display of performative governance, the United Kingdom has decided to launch a 'consultation' on banning social media for children under sixteen. It is a move so profoundly stupid, so inherently futile, that it could only have been birthed by the collective vacuum of the British political class. For those unfamiliar with the terminology of the overpaid and under-qualified, a 'consultation' is a bureaucratic exercise where the government asks for opinions they intend to ignore while pretending to be shocked by the obvious. The ultimate goal, according to the announcement, is to make schools 'phone-free by default.' It is a charmingly antediluvian sentiment, akin to trying to ban oxygen because it occasionally aids in the combustion of public buildings.

Let us dissect the players in this tragicomedy. On one side, we have a government that has presided over the slow-motion collapse of every tangible infrastructure from the railways to the healthcare system. Having failed to manage the physical world, they have decided to colonize the digital one with the grace of a drunk elephant. The suggestion that a nation which can barely monitor its own borders can somehow police the scrolling habits of fifteen-year-olds is the kind of delusions-of-grandeur usually reserved for the final stages of empire. This is not about 'child safety'; it is about the optics of 'doing something' while the country rots. It is easier to declare war on TikTok than it is to fix the literacy rates of the children who use it.

Then, we have the parents—the true catalysts of this rot. This 'ban' is the ultimate gift to the modern, spineless guardian. For years, parents have used the smartphone as a digital pacifier, a cheap way to silence the existential dread of raising an actual human being. Now that the pacifier has turned into a brain-melting conduit for algorithmically generated sludge, they want the state to step in and play the 'bad cop.' It is the height of cowardice. Rather than performing the arduous task of saying 'no' to their own offspring, they are begging Whitehall to write a law that will be bypassed by any teenager with a VPN and three minutes of free time. The family unit has effectively resigned, handing its responsibilities over to a Department of Education that couldn’t navigate a microwave setting, let alone a global data network.

And what of the schools? The government expects them to be 'phone-free by default.' This assumes, quite hilariously, that teachers have the time or the inclination to act as border patrol agents. We are talking about an education system where classrooms are already overcrowded and staff are fleeing the profession in droves. Now, they are expected to spend their days frisking puberty-stricken rebels for clandestine iPhones. It turns the school from an institution of learning—however flawed—into a Victorian panopticon. If the government truly wanted schools to be 'phone-free,' they would have to acknowledge that the entire modern curriculum is increasingly dependent on the very technology they are pretending to despise. But consistency is not a requirement for a press release.

Of course, the tech giants are the only ones winning. While the politicians posture and the parents whine, the algorithms continue to do exactly what they were designed to do: harvest attention and monetize neurosis. A ban on under-16s is a minor compliance hurdle, a checkbox to be ticked. The tech companies know that the horse has not only bolted from the barn, it has started its own influencer channel and is selling crypto-scams to the other animals. The idea of 'age verification' is a joke in a world where children are more tech-literate than the septuagenarians drafting the legislation. You cannot legislate away the desire for distraction in a world that offers nothing but reasons to be distracted.

Ultimately, this is the death rattle of the nanny state trying to grasp at a ghost. The Right will cheer for 'discipline' while ignoring the fact that their own free-market gods created this mess. The Left will fret about 'equity' while ignoring the fact that the state is becoming a surrogate parent. Everyone is wrong, and everyone is annoying. We are witnessing the final surrender of the individual to the collective incompetence of a society that has forgotten how to raise its young and how to govern its adults. The ban won't work, the kids will stay addicted, and the politicians will find something else to ban next week to keep the headlines moving. It is a cycle of stupidity that even the most advanced AI couldn't have programmed more efficiently.