Wu Chen/Wen After Australia took the lead in legislating to prohibit minors under the age of 16 from using mainstream social media, two more countries followed suit: France passed a bill on March 31 to restrict minors under the age of 15 from using social networking platforms; Indonesia officially implemented a social media ban for people under the age of 16 on March 28th. The French parliament defines social media as a 'mass-produced assembly line of anxiety', pointing directly at its erosion of the physical and mental health of young people; Indonesia aims to prevent addiction and online harm by tightening the entry barriers to the digital space.

A global digital protection campaign for minors has begun. Many countries have coincidentally adopted tough regulations, driven by a clear consensus on the same issue: social media has posed a systematic threat to minors, with issues such as addiction, addiction, lack of attention, detachment from reality, filter beautification, and online bullying. The negative impact on the growth of young people cannot be ignored.

The harm caused by social media to minors has evolved from individual risks to widespread hazards. Numerous studies and real-world observations have confirmed that platform algorithms precisely utilize the physiological characteristics of the adolescent brain, which have a strong reward system and weak self-control system, to create high-intensity addiction through infinite refreshing and instant feedback, leading to sustained fragmentation of attention and rapid decline in deep reading and focused thinking abilities. The filter culture of the virtual world "beautifies" life, distorts aesthetics, and causes teenagers to fall into self doubt in comparison, leading to a significant increase in psychological problems such as depression and anxiety. What's even more serious is that the screen isolates real interactions, and many children exhibit the phenomenon of online "social cows" and offline "social anxiety", weakening their social skills in reality; However, online bullying is highly covert, spreads quickly, and causes deep harm, leaving long-term psychological trauma to minors.

However, imposing a one size fits all ban based on age is essentially a rigid and crude regulatory measure. Although it may seem resolute, it may not truly be effective and cannot respond to the real growth needs of digital natives.

On the one hand, there are obvious technical loopholes in age verification, as minors can easily bypass restrictions by borrowing family members' identity information and modifying account information; The stricter the regulation, the more likely it is to drive them to turn to niche platforms with weaker regulation, and the risks are even more uncontrollable. On the other hand, the ban ignores the reality of the digital age: this generation of children are born digital natives, and social media is an important channel for some marginalized and isolated teenagers to find identity and gain support. Simple bans may cut off their social connections, but instead exacerbate loneliness and alienation. More importantly, the ban cannot answer the question of "how to use it", treating the symptoms without addressing the root cause, and cannot fundamentally improve the digital literacy and self-protection ability of young people.

Applying the wisdom of ancient water management, the real challenge is never to prohibit its use, but to find a balance between blocking and dredging. How to make good use of high-tech tools, especially the rapidly changing AI tools, to rebuild warm face-to-face connections is a proposition that countries around the world must face directly.

When Australia first banned social media, the world was watching the effect of this "social experiment". France and Indonesia's follow-up will increase the sample size of the experiment, and its effectiveness is worth carefully sorting out in the future. More importantly, the whole society needs to invest more energy in cultivating digital literacy, with the core being teaching young people to use high-tech tools rationally and not be dominated by them. This means incorporating media literacy, digital ethics, and information recognition skills into regular education, enabling young people to understand algorithm logic, identify false information, manage usage time reasonably, learn to protect personal privacy, and shift from passive addiction to active control.

More important than digital literacy is rebuilding a warm face-to-face connection between people. The biggest hidden danger of social media lies in using virtual likes instead of real companionship and diluting deep communication with fragmented interactions. When teenagers' social satisfaction is highly dependent on online feedback, their empathy, expression, and stress resistance abilities in reality will gradually deteriorate. Therefore, the core of Shu is to bring children back to life from the screen: firstly, to return to the family, and to keep the communication at the dining table and interaction in the living room away from mobile phones; Secondly, it is important to encourage more participation and experience in the real world, such as sports, art, and outdoor exploration, so that young people can learn to observe body language, try interactive communication, and understand others, express themselves, and build trust through real-world interactions.

In addition, we also need to learn to listen. Some minors may see adults' "patriarchal" declarations in a one size fits all ban, but we do not want the "social media ban" to trigger cat and mouse games and strengthen minors' rebellious psychology. We also need to encourage innovation, especially the development of "responsible" AI, which may overturn the "attention economy" that social media relies on for survival. It is no longer about giving you what you want (exacerbating addiction), but about giving you what you need (guidance and recommendations), after all, digital communication has become an indispensable way for the entire society.

(The author is a financial writer, former editor in chief of The Economist Business Review, and founder of Morning Reading Group)