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Too Young for TikTok, Old Enough to Vote?

June 18, 2026 UKR Editor GOVERNMENT 0

CLIVE PINDER

There are few sights more comic than a modern minister pretending to be the stern parent of the nation.

We know the routine. The concerned expression. The voice lowered half an octave. The carefully arranged background of flags, earnest young people and laminated safeguarding jargon. Then comes the announcement. The government is going to protect children online.

At which point every parent in the country is expected to breathe a sigh of relief, put down the gin and thank the Department for Being Sensible on Our Behalf.

This would be comic enough at any time. It is even better when the Government now proposing to supervise teenagers online gives the impression of being unable to supervise itself. Sir Keir Starmer wants to childproof the internet while presiding over a state that cannot produce a defence policy that convinces its own side, let alone our allies or enemies.

Still, never mind the Russian threat. Has anyone thought about Chloe scrolling Instagram?

To be fair, there is a problem. Social media is not exactly a moral health spa. Much of it resembles a Victorian freak show redesigned by behavioural psychologists and funded by advertising executives. It is addictive, vain, cruel, stupid and often deranging. The idea that a 14 year-old girl with a smartphone is simply exercising ‘choice’ while being stalked by an algorithm designed to exploit insecurity is absurd.

So no, this is not a libertarian hymn to TikTok.

The problem is not that politicians worry about the effect of social media on young people. The problem is that they worry about it selectively.

The same political class that increasingly tells us young people must be protected from online manipulation is also very keen to tell us that those same young people are mature enough to vote.

This is where the argument begins to wobble like a drunk on a paddleboard.

Apparently, a teenager may not have the judgement to scroll through Instagram without state supervision, but does have the judgement to help choose the next government.

This is not a principle. It is a convenience.

Defenders of the idea will say social media and voting are entirely different activities. One involves psychological harm. The other involves civic empowerment.

Up to a point. But both depend on the same basic faculties. Judgement, emotional maturity, resistance to manipulation, the ability to process information and some capacity to distinguish truth from nonsense.

These are precisely the faculties politicians tell us young people lack when the topic is social media. Yet they mysteriously reappear when the topic is extending the franchise.

If a 16 year-old is too impressionable to cope with Andrew Tate videos, dieting influencers or Chinese-owned dopamine dispensers, why is he or she suddenly immune to political propaganda?

Modern electioneering is not a seminar in constitutional philosophy. It is organised emotional manipulation. It uses fear, flattery, identity, resentment, slogans and carefully tested nonsense. It promises free things that are not free. It manufactures panic. It tells voters that unless they vote correctly, the planet will boil, fascism will return, public services will collapse and everyone decent will suffer.

But this, apparently, is citizenship.

The difference is not that social media manipulates while politics enlightens. The difference is that one form of manipulation sits outside the control of approved institutions. The other benefits them.

That is the real story.

The modern state has developed an elastic theory of childhood. Young people are treated as children when the state wants more power over families, technology, schools or speech. They are treated as adults when the state wants their votes, their assent or their moral authority.

Too young to smoke. Too young to drink. Too young to rent a car. Too young, increasingly, to open an app without the digital equivalent of a permission slip.

Yet old enough to help determine who runs the country.

Parents have been quietly demoted in this arrangement. A mother and father may apparently lack the wisdom to decide how their child uses a phone. Yet that same child, guided by teachers, activists, celebrities and taxpayer-funded campaigns, is expected to make profound democratic choices.

The absurdity is not hard to spot. It merely requires the increasingly unfashionable skill of noticing.

This is not an argument that teenagers are stupid. Many are thoughtful, curious and better informed than adults who spend their evenings shouting at the television. Nor is it an argument that all social media regulation is wrong. Some of it may be necessary, particularly where very young children are concerned.

It is an argument for coherence.

Parliament cannot say young people need protection from algorithms then invite them to swim in the sewage works of political campaigning and call it citizenship.

It cannot claim to defend autonomy while constantly transferring authority from families to bureaucracies.

This is the contradiction at the heart modern government. It does not want young people to grow up. It wants them managed, mobilised and morally useful.

So by all means let us have a serious debate about children, screens and harm. Let us talk about addiction, anxiety, pornography, bullying, parental responsibility and the tech companies that have turned childhood attention into a commodity.

But let us also drop the pretence.

A government that does not trust teenagers or their parents to navigate social media cannot then turn around and declare those same teenagers mature enough to help govern the nation.

That is not democracy.

It is babysitting with a ballot box.

Clive Pinder is a former elected ornament who has noticed that the state does not trust parents to manage their children’s phones, but does trust teenagers to help choose the Government. He writes and podcasts in search of sanity on Substack.

This article (Too Young for TikTok, Old Enough to Vote?) was created and published by The Daily Sceptic and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Clive Pinder

See Related Article Below

Nanny Starmer: Protecting Children From Everything Except Real Danger

FRANK HAVILAND

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If you didn’t know better, you’d think Keir Starmer had just cured cancer, ended child poverty, and guaranteed England’s victory at the World Cup – all with one authoritarian flourish of his pedantic little Parker pen. Alas, yesterday’s grand policy unveiling, complete with the obligatory smug smirk, was rather less heroic. Starmer has finally got his hands on the social media controls: a ban for under-16s, coming into force in spring 2027. Desperate for an audience as safe as the Downing Street mirror, Starmer delivered the policy announcement to a studio full of bereaved parents (those whose children died in cases linked to social media harms). Even then, he looked like he was losing the room:

“I am not prepared to compromise on the safety and happiness of our children, and that is why this ban must happen, and that is why this ban will happen.”

It’s reassuring to know that this Labour government has children’s best interests at heart, because I confess I was beginning to have my doubts. What with the prioritisation of “community cohesion” over a national inquiry into grooming gangs, votes at 16 (but no access to unfiltered information), aggressive self-ID adjacent policies in schools, biological males in women’s sports, an abject refusal to stop the small boats, turning a blind eye to adult migrants posing as schoolchildren, and the general prioritisation of ideology and optics over actual safeguarding – it looked to the untrained eye like Labour didn’t give a hoot about children’s wellbeing, unless there were votes in it.

But clearly, the untrained eye is no match for the blind eye.

Taking to the rostrum with the ill-disguised glee only a performative ban can yield, Starmer kicked off with the need for freedom in the Middle East, before pivoting to the need for totalitarian control at home. Then the sanctimony kicked in:

“Government is always about choices. And it is clear to me that a full ban is the right choice. I come to it as a parent myself. I know exactly the fears we all feel when we’re thinking about this issue. You know, all I’ve ever wanted for my own children hand on heart, is for them to be happy and for them to be safe. And I think that’s what any parent wants.”

Having installed himself as the nation’s Big Daddy, Starmer then proceeded to outline exactly what he was protecting us from:

  • Fighting for children’s “happiness and safety against the most powerful companies in the world.” (a clear shot at Elon Musk)
  • “We are giving children their childhoods back.” (Classic state overreach)
  • “We will have to adapt our approach as technology changes… we have those powers.” (A quiet admission that this won’t be a one-off)
  • “This is a huge step for our country. A step that I’ve taken after sitting down and listening particularly to parents who had lost usually a teenager in relation to what happened on social media.” (Emotional shield, used to shut down debate)

As ever, Starmer is living proof that those who aspire to the office of milk monitor, should never be trusted with such extreme power.

The irony of course, is that social media, smartphones and technology in general are a huge problem – for adults as well as children. Even politicos like me, for whom X is indispensable as the first port of call for news, can find ourselves aimlessly doom-scrolling for hours on end. But surely, along with vices like alcohol and gambling, the emphasis should be on personal (and parental) responsibility rather than state control? Only in the hands of a zealot like Starmer, could the social media overreach be so strong you automatically reach for the sign-up screen. Indeed, with Starmer’s hand now on your shoulder from cradle to grave, if he were delivering your eulogy, you’d find the strength to get up and walk out, wouldn’t you?

Call me a cynic, but I suspect Starmer’s latest incursion has little to do with child protection. For starters, Bluesky – the pedophiles network of choice – was initially excluded from the ban, whereas X (where Elon Musk is deeply critical of the PM) was centre stage. Furthermore, the age verification will easily be dodged by the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) – sales of which have rocketed 165% since yesterday! What’s far more likely, is that mandatory facial scanning, banking checks or digital wallets, will force the public to acquiesce to digital ID via the backdoor – something a majority of the British public objects to.

Here’s Elon Musk putting it as bluntly as possible:

Meanwhile, here’s Technology Secretary Liz Kendall admitting she has no answer to the workaround of VPNs:

An authoritarian mind like Starmer’s (a man who always follows the rules himself) has difficulty registering the ingenuity humans have for circumventing stupid systems. In Australia for instance, where a similar ban was implemented just six months ago, results have been mixed at best. According to Harry Dyer, Professor of Education at the University of East Anglia, “Their ban has not effectively stopped young people using social media.” Children are dodging facial checks by uploading photographs of family members or even masks, with the eSafety Commission finding 70 percent of parents reported their children were still on the banned platforms.

More to the point, blanket bans have no guarantee of success. In Starmer’s Britain for instance, young people’s access to knives – particularly through online sales, has been criminalised. And yet, you wouldn’t know it by the amateur jousting tournaments playing out daily on the streets of London. It’s not just knives, either. Britain has a proud tradition of underage smoking, drink and drugs. We continue to lead Europe in teenage pregnancies – and last I checked, that was illegal too.

Most disappointing of all are the swathes of soi-disant conservatives, rejoicing as the nanny state relieves them of the parenting duties they so willingly eschew. Those like Shadow Secretary of State for Education, Laura Trott:

Or, Britain’s strictest Headmistress, Katharine Birbalsingh:

Contrary to Westminster opinion, happiness is not the remit of the state. Safety, arguably, is. But they’re not doing a convincing job of that either. It is, and has always been, for parents to decide how to raise their children – and outsourcing that responsibility to Nanny Starmer is only going to end in tears.

If the Prime Minister has his way, at 16 you’ll soon be able to vote, join the army, even have your own children – but still need Big Daddy Starmer to set your bedtime.

Frank Haviland is the Editor of The New Conservative, and the author of Banalysis: The Lie Destroying the West.

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This article (Nanny Starmer: Protecting Children From Everything Except Real Danger) was created and published by Frank Haviland and is republished here under “Fair Use”

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