The UK will ban children under 16 from social media by early next year, replicating a policy that came into effect in Australia in 2025. The move is intended to put children’s well-being ahead of technology companies’ profits. But how will scientists study the effects of the measure and determine whether it is actually having a positive impact?

“We have no evidence either way,” says at Bath Spa University in the UK, who is working with the Australian government to analyse the effects of its own ban and is also advising the UK government. “It’s such new territory.”

Leading the way on research in the UK is the Wellcome Trust, which is already deep into the IRL Trial in Bradford. This has recruited about 4000 kids from 10 schools, aged 12 to 15, who installed an app on their phones to track their social media use. For half of those children, the app also limits access to social apps. The researchers expect to publish their first results in the middle of next year, after the newly announced ban has taken effect. However, at the Wellcome Trust says the findings should still help inform policy.

They will also improve upon existing research that tends to rely on self-reported measures, like asking children or their parents how much time they spend on social media, rather than using more objective metrics. What’s more, the few interventional studies that do exist . “If you’re talking about big changes here around mental health and those sorts of things, you’re not going to see changes in two weeks,” says Etchells.

Australia’s ban came into place in December, which is too recent to gauge its long-term effects. But once national bans like these are in place, it is impossible to do controlled studies, in which two groups of similar people are allocated access or not. What’s more, the results from larger studies on the wider population before and after the ban will be impossible to unpick from other social impacts.

For now, Sebastian is gearing up to run additional studies that hopefully generate at least some results soon after the ban. The UK government expects to bring legislation to Parliament before Christmas, with the policy coming into force in early 2027.

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The Wellcome Trust has invited 14 research teams to submit plans, some or all of which will be funded, into the effects of social media on young people’s well-being. These will take varying approaches to capture as much data as possible, with the goal of eventually synthesising the data into a conclusive result.

Some of these studies will follow existing cohorts and regularly interview them about their mental health and well-being over time, before and after the ban. Sebastian says these approaches can be insightful, but rigid. Other studies are proposing momentary assessments, where participants are sent text messages asking them to complete short surveys on the spur of the moment, capturing a different kind of data. Others may look to analyse data that is already being captured for some insight, such as the rate of hospital admissions or school absences.

With time against them, Sebastian hopes that some results could emerge relatively soon after the ban, but they are likely to be nuanced. For instance, a social media ban could have some positive impacts, but also disruptive ones in the short term, as online supportive networks are lost.

The effects of such bans are also likely to change over the years or decades, as today’s children and younger teenagers approach adulthood having never had access to social media. “It’s not that this is a done deal,” says Sebastian. “Policies could be continuing to change over the longer term, and it’s possible that the findings from our study and others will help to shape those policies iteratively.”

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For now, some are wary that the UK government is taking a reactive stance in the complex problem of poor youth mental health, without the appropriate data. at the University of Oxford told the Science Media Centre that a blanket age ban is a “blunt tool” and a stronger step than current evidence can support, but adds that the Wellcome research is an opportunity to learn whether these measures will “help, harm or neither”.

One thing that could hinder research – and undermine government policy – is the ability of users to skirt the bans. Early reports suggest that facial-recognition technology designed to verify ages online can be , and VPNs make it trivial toĚýappear to websites as a user from another countryĚýwhere age checks aren’t mandated.

Surveys in Australia by the Molly Rose Foundation, a suicide-prevention charity, found that 61 per cent of 12-to-15-year-olds who had accounts on restricted platforms before the ban came into force . The organisation said that given the findings, it would be a “high-stakes gamble” for the UK to follow suit at this stage.

Need a listening ear? UK Samaritans: 116123 (samaritans.org); US Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: 988 (988lifeline.org). Visit bit.ly/SuicideHelplines for services in other countries.

Right now, I’m glued to my phone. Like most people in the US, I get my news from various apps – social posts, podcasts, newsletters – and when things are blowing up (literally) I can’t look away. People in Minneapolis are posting video updates from protests; experts are publishing essays about international law and the US attack on Venezuela. I have to consume them all! The weirdest part, though, is that the more I watch and read what other people are saying, the lonelier I feel.

This is hardly a new or unique experience. Sociologists have been talking about it for nearly 80 years. In 1950, scholars David Riesman, Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denney published a book called , in which they argued that the rise of consumerism and mass media had led to a new kind of personality type that is deeply sensitive to loneliness. They called this personality “other-directed”, and their descriptions feel startlingly prescient in our era of social media and AI chatbots.

Other-directed people are constantly attuned to what everyone around them is doing, using the preferences of their peer groups to decide what to buy, wear and think. Because their values come from peers, rather than elders or ancestors, they tend to be present-oriented and unconcerned with history. Riesman and his colleagues warned that other-directed people are obsessed with conforming, anxious to be “part of a crowd” and “having fun”. What other-directed people fear more than anything is being alone.

All of these personality traits are immediately recognisable to people dealing with social media, with its peer pressure, parasocial relationships with influencers and – especially these days – surveillance capabilities. We are always watching each other and being watched. And because we fear being alone, companies produce apps designed to fool us into thinking we aren’t. That’s one of the insidious things about AI chatbots, some of which are to act like friends.

When we cobble ourselves together out of what we think other people want, we hide from something crucial

There’s a paradox in every other-directed person’s heart. As much as we may want to conform, to be part of the group chat, we also want to feel like we are unique. Riesman and his colleagues explained that consumerism itself assuages this other-directed anxiety by offering “false personalisation”. You experience this when you find yourself choosing between six virtually identical polo shirts at the store. Picking one might make you feel that there’s a special brand out there just for you, but, fundamentally, all those shirts are the same. You wind up wearing a polo shirt just like everybody else.

This kind of false personalisation shows up all the time in the algorithms that shape our experiences online. TikTok and other apps have a “for you” feed full of videos that feel tailor-made for your specific tastes. And yet it is shaped by an algorithm that you don’t control, whose purpose is largely to keep your eyeballs glued to the same app that everyone else is glued to. It is “for you” in the service of conformity.

As other-directed people, we are invited to express ourselves mainly by participating in peer groups or by “joining the conversation”, as so many ads suggest. We turn ourselves into internet content, adding our words and videos to the morass of others online. Be yourself by showing that you are doing what everybody else is doing!

And yet we still feel lonely. Partly that’s because in-person friendships and communities are fundamentally different from online ones. But something else is going on here, and I think it has to do with the personality shifts chronicled in The Lonely Crowd. When we cobble ourselves together out of what we think other people want, we hide from something crucial: our own truly personal, messy, eccentric, non-conformist desires. We can’t connect with other people in a genuine way if we don’t know ourselves.

Riesman and his co-authors suggested two solutions to this other-directed problem. First, we need to take back our leisure hours from the hyper-consumerist sphere of media. All that effort we put into paying attention to our peers is too much like work, they argued, and we need more free play. Which brings me to their second suggestion, which is that people – and especially kids – should test out new identities and experiences. Figure out what you enjoy when nobody is telling you what “fun” is supposed to be. Do something you have never done before. Wear something dramatic or silly. Strike up a conversation with a neighbour you have never met. Surprise yourself. And see how it feels to just… experiment.

You won’t figure out who you are from a “for you” feed or a chatbot. So get off your phone, do something unexpected and be yourself for a while.

Ěý

What I’m reading
Notes From a Regicide, by Isaac Fellman, a fantastical tale of rebellion and family drama.

What I’m watching
Heated Rivalry, because I know how to have fun.

What I’m working on
Researching Sogdiana, my favourite ancient diaspora culture.

Ěý

Annalee Newitz is a science journalist and author. Their latest book is Automatic Noodle. They are the co-host of the Hugo-winning podcast Our Opinions Are Correct. You can follow them @annaleen and their website is