This week, the UK government announced a ban on social media for users under sixteen, set to begin in Spring two thousand twenty-seven. But the Electronic Frontier Foundation argues the policy will cause more harm than it prevents. The core problem: there is no reliable, privacy-preserving way to verify age online. Beyond that fundamental flaw, teenagers will lose access to educational videos on YouTube, community events on Facebook, and connections with distant family. The policy also hands control over young people's internet access from families to government regulators. According to the EFF, this caps a decade-long pattern of UK internet restrictions, built on panic rather than evidence.

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