The Social Saga Part 3

Monday 15th June – Social media ban launched in the UK. Friday 19th June – Toy Story 5 releases in the UK with a plot set out to navigate a modern threat to playtime – technology.

Have Starmer and Pixar been secretly liaising to align these events? I suspect it’s more a happy coincidence that has helped me to start this most recent thought write up on what’s becoming, for me, an increasingly dark topic. 

I say ‘dark topic’ because having read so much about this over the last year or so, I have become increasingly saddened on three fronts:

• The content exposure that’s shaping childhood; this article on Cosmeticorexia published earlier this month made me feel sick to my stomach. And you don’t need to look too far for stats that expose how closely linked excessive social media use is to increased feelings of anxiety, depression and online harm.
• That platforms seem to think what they do is enough without political involvement (spoiler – it isn’t), defending themselves as safe zones, the banning of which will push children to unregulated platforms. This obviously isn’t what we want, but it’s worth noting such noble platforms as Meta, TikTok and YouTube are all under investigation for non compliance in Australia since their ban came into force in December last year.
• The fact children are seemingly so desperate to access content on these platforms, they will find ways to access it; a recent study revealed 61% of 10-16 year old Australians don’t feel as though the ban has affected them at all.

Legislation is failing to out-tech a tech-savvy generation. Which tech-giants continue to benefit from. The debate around how well the ban can be enforced echoes those raised by Australia that I wrote about last year.

You’ll have your own opinion on this – indeed, this week’s announcement comes off the back of the ‘Growing up in the online world’ national consultation. You might have a couple of hats on – thrilled as a parent that the government is taking such ambitious action, less thrilled as a marketer who’s been forced into re-thinking how your brand reaches the next generation.

But there are positives this initiative could offer to our industry as a whole. Economic data reviewed by the IPA suggests those over 45s account for over half of all UK consumer spending, so there’s an opportunity here to shift ad spend in the social space towards an audience that actually have disposable income to spend. We can also diversify our channel selection, looking at ways to reach a target audience that doesn’t rely predominantly on social platforms.

So, could we survive without social? No. We could thrive without it.

Just imagine what it could be like. Thinking creatively. Demanding more than just disposable content for some short-term results that could be doing long-term damage.

Social media for marketing purposes won’t go away because of a government law. But some children’s exposure to destructive content could. That’s the only real point I want to make.

Written by Beth Menear – AD