The smart course

Britain needs an Australian-style social media ban

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‘Make the most of the school holidays coming up rather than spending it scrolling on your phone,” says Anthony Albanese, the Australian prime minister, in support of his ban on social media for under-16s, which came into force last week. “Start a new sport, learn a new instrument or read that book that has been sitting there on the shelf.”

Behind Albanese’s homespun language there is radical thinking and decisive action that is needed but lacking in London. Keir Starmer has told The Observer he opposes an Australian-style ban. He says he’d rather find ways to control the content on teenagers’ phones rather than their use of them. That doesn’t meet the moment.

Between a quarter and a third of young people with smartphones show signs of being addicted to them. This is not surprising. Smartphones run on algorithms written precisely to be addictive, to maximise users’ time spent on them and revenues for a small number of staggeringly profitable platforms.