Amid growing concerns about teenagers’ mental health and wellbeing, governments around the world are considering or enacting new restrictions on young people’s access to social media.

Australia has already legislated a ban on social media for under-16s, and the UK government has announced plans to introduce similar restrictions from spring 2027.

Yet a fundamental question remains largely unanswered: what exactly are governments trying to regulate through these bans?

Policymakers are already drawing boundaries around which platforms count as social media and which do not. The proposed UK approach is expected to follow the Australian model, covering platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook, YouTube and X. Messaging services such as WhatsApp and Signal are expected to be exempt from the proposed ban.

Our new research suggests that these boundaries may not always align with how the public understands social media.

Our study surveyed 968 UK adults, including 484 18- to 25-year-olds, about their perceptions of social media. We asked participants which online platforms they considered to be social media, what characteristics they associated with it, and whether they agreed with common definitions used by researchers and organisations. We also collected their views of how social media affects people’s lives.

Differing opinions

As digital technologies continue to evolve, distinctions between online platforms are becoming increasingly blurred. Many now combine messaging, content sharing, entertainment and community participation in the same app. Our findings suggest that the boundaries policymakers are drawing around “social media” may not always align with how ordinary users understand and experience these platforms. Social media encompasses a range of different online activities and experiences.

One of our clearest findings was that people do not consistently agree on what counts as social media. Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X and Snapchat were almost universally recognised as social media platforms. But agreement became less clear for others, despite many possessing characteristics commonly used in scholarly definitions of social media.

For instance, Roblox enables users to create and share content and interact with each other in shared virtual spaces through messaging functions. But nearly 80% of the people we surveyed didn’t see it as social media. Opinion was also split on whether blogs and forums counted as social media.

On the other hand, approximately 65% of the people we surveyed considered WhatsApp to be social media, despite this platform being excluded from the UK’s proposed restrictions. More people also considered Reddit, Tumblr, and Pinterest to be social media than YouTube, despite YouTube being included within the proposed ban and the others currently falling outside it.

Defining social media was only part of the story. We also found that public perceptions of its impacts were far more nuanced than the often-polarised debate suggests.

Importantly, people rarely described social media as wholly good or bad. Instead, they emphasised context. The perceived impact depended on which platform was being used, how it was being used, and what people were doing while using it.

Young people showed a sophisticated understanding of these trade-offs. They spoke about concerns relating to anxiety, body image, cyberbullying and excessive use. They also highlighted the important role social media can play in maintaining friendships, finding communities and accessing support. Many described actively managing their use to protect their wellbeing and productivity.

Our findings suggest that young people themselves are often aware of both the risks and benefits and do not necessarily view social media as a uniformly negative force.

What does this mean for bans?

Our findings suggest that regulating social media is more complicated than it first appears. If politicians, researchers and the public do not share a common understanding of what the term “social media” includes, regulations may be difficult to communicate, implement and evaluate. Decisions about which platforms fall inside or outside a ban are not solely technical; they shape who is affected by the policy and why.

More broadly, our findings raise questions about where responsibility for online harms should lie. Debates about social media bans often focus on restricting children and young people’s access to technology. However, many of the harms that our respondents identified, including exposure to harmful content, misinformation, cyberbullying and potentially addictive platform features, can be harmful to any user. Crucially, these potential impacts are shaped by decisions made by technology companies themselves.

Attention should be shifted from the behaviour of young people to the design and governance of the platforms they use. Stronger regulation of harmful content, algorithms, age-appropriate design features, accessible reporting, transparency and platform accountability are all parts of the solution.

If future regulation is to be effective, it must be grounded not only in evidence about risks, but also in a clear understanding of the technologies it seeks to govern.