I was enjoying a rather spectacular sea bass at a private dinner with Keir Starmer last Tuesday when the Prime Minister leaned over to share his vision for the youth of Britain. His proposal to ban under-16s from major social media platforms entirely, and to impose a strict 8:30 PM digital curfew on older teenagers, struck me not as draconian, but as the first piece of sensible governance this country has seen in a decade. Finally, a leader willing to do what weak, modern parents will not: wield the awesome, coercive power of the state to turn off the bloody router so the adults can have some peace.
Critics, naturally, have called Starmer’s sweeping legislation an overreach of the nanny state. I call it a masterstroke of national mental hygiene. For too long, the public discourse has been violently polluted by 15-year-olds on TikTok participating in so-called "trends," or congregating on X to post disrespectful reaction images under the serious, considered thoughts of professional columnists like myself. It is frankly exhausting to publish a nuanced, 4,000-word defense of the water companies, only to be immediately bombarded by teenagers claiming I am "out of touch." By legally barring these undeveloped minds from the public square, Downing Street is restoring the internet to its rightful owners: middle-aged people with property portfolios and blue ticks.
Downing Street has described the framework as "Australia plus," a moniker I find delightfully reassuring. It evokes the rugged, no-nonsense penal-colony discipline of the Outback, combined with the added "plus" of meticulous British bureaucratic enforcement. If the Australians can successfully ban their youth from accessing the digital world, there is no reason we cannot go further and actively punish ours for trying.
The Prime Minister’s bravery also extends into the shadowy, unregulated realm of video games. Under the new rules, gaming apps will be stripped of the option to chat with strangers. During a recent panel I chaired at the Aspen Ideas Festival, a prominent Silicon Valley executive admitted to me, entirely off the record, that children were using these headsets to discuss "strategies" and "memes" with international peers instead of focusing on their future contributions to the domestic GDP. Why, pray tell, does a 14-year-old need to coordinate a tactical digital strike with a stranger in Poland on a Tuesday evening? They should be downstairs in the drawing room, quietly listening to their father explain the bond market.
Of course, the bleeding hearts in the civil liberties lobby are particularly outraged by the 8:30 PM scrolling ban for 17-year-olds. But as I argued at a recent symposium on civic duty in Mayfair, a teenager scrolling past sunset is a teenager not reading the classics, not preparing for a career in management consulting, and most importantly, not asleep. What possible business does a sixth-form student have being conscious at 8:45 PM?
A 17-year-old's brain is simply too fragile to process the sheer intellectual weight of an evening news cycle, let alone the complex geopolitical takes posted by our leading newspaper columnists.
Some will inevitably argue that managing screen time is the responsibility of parents, not the Prime Minister. But let us be brutally honest with ourselves: the modern parent has comprehensively failed. They are too busy, too tired, or simply too cowardly to pry the glowing rectangles from their children’s clammy hands. If a mother cannot find the moral courage to physically wrestle an iPhone away from her sulking son, then she should be immensely grateful that Keir Starmer is willing to send Ofcom to do it for her.
If it takes the full legislative might of the British government to ensure a teenager isn't sending a Snapchat in the dark, then I say bring on the enforcers. I, for one, look forward to logging onto X at 9:00 PM and enjoying a peaceful, uninterrupted echo chamber of my peers, blissfully free of youth, just as the founding fathers of the internet intended.