Social media bans, dealing with boys online and a lack of community spaces. Life for 14-year-old girls right now.
When I asked if they were worried about how boys talk about them online, almost every hand in the room went up.
Who says journalists never get away from their desks anymore? Yesterday, I had the real pleasure of visiting a South London high school to talk about being a political journalist as part of their International Women’s Day programme.
At The Lead, we always aim to tell the stories that matter for people who don’t always have a voice — and I was reminded of that as I prepared to speak. Talking to a class of Year 10s is an opportunity that policy journalists rarely get, and I really hoped to come away feeling that young people do still care about politics and society, despite the continuous attempts of politicians to disenfranchise and disengage them. I needn’t have worried. Engaging a class of 14-year-olds about politics might sound daunting — I spent time thinking of ways to link political decisions and policies to their everyday lives — but this class was so switched on.
One girl asked me whether journalists always cover the stories that matter. I explained that while the industry tends to be fairly privileged and homogenous, a good journalist should always try to engage the people most affected by political decisions — especially those who are underrepresented in political coverage. But this thought gave me pause.
Over the past week, journalists have salivated over the political fallout of the proposed welfare cuts, wondering if it might trigger a rebellion in the government’s ranks. Meanwhile, Labour MPs' phones have been ringing off the hook as disabled and ill constituents ring them, panicking, asking if they are about to see a cut to their income. So often we talk about these things theoretically or politically, with little space paid to lived experience that falls outside Westminster’s walls.
With this in mind, I decided to talk to them about a policy idea impacting them: the proposed social media ban for under-16s put forward by Technology Secretary Peter Kyle last week. The students were really keen to talk about it.
While none of them supported a total ban, they all wanted much stronger regulation on hate speech and misinformation. Most agreed that under-12s shouldn’t be able to access social media at all and companies should be held criminally responsible when platforms fail to protect young users. While many valued social media for building social connections, others recognised that it isn’t real life — and some felt it was actually damaging their ability to form genuine relationships.
One girl mentioned the Netflix drama Adolescence and its focus on male radicalisation. When I asked if they were worried about how boys talk about them online, almost every hand in the room went up.
It struck me that we’re not very good at involving young people in political conversations - and I’m guilty of it too. I write often about young people, particularly how they are neglected by policy makers or used as a political football by governments in brewing moral panics, but I don’t have many young people in my life, and I don’t actually know what they’re thinking or feeling. They’re often treated as props — used as talking points for point-scoring on issues like national service, radicalisation, grooming gangs, and social media. But young people hold the key to our future, and the failure of policy-makers to address their challenges are setting them up for the bleakest future yet.
An outright social media ban might mitigate some of the worst harms of the online world, but we need to stop making decisions about young people without understanding their perspectives and unique challenges. Many pointed out: the horse has already bolted. This is how young people live their lives now. Policymakers have been too slow. Some students also pointed out how hard it is to bond with peers outside of school, highlighting the lack of safe community spaces for young people to spend time in. And while young people support more protections on the online space that they conduct their lives in, they also need a recognition by politicians of their own unique struggles and worries about the world they are growing up in.
But what’s clear is that there is a generation of brave, thoughtful, and well-informed young people who care deeply about injustice and their communities — and they desperately need their voices to be heard.