Harry Nicolaides, the Australian author sentenced in January to three years in prison for defaming Thailand’s king in a little-known book published in 2005 flew back to Melbourne on the weekend of 21 January after receiving a royal pardon. The decision followed intensive lobbying by the Australian government.
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Banning social media for the under-16s appears to be contagious. Australia set the trend in December and now other countries are considering doing the same. There is growing momentum in Britain in favour of a ban (with the House of Lords having voted in favour of one last month). Spain is the first European country to propose legislation and Greece is said to be following suit.
The Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has spoken candidly about the abuse he has experienced online, saying it has “crossed many red lines” and nearly caused him to resign in 2024. He’s pushing through laws not only to ban access to major platforms for under-16s, but to hold social media executives criminally responsible if they do not take down illegal or hateful content. The country might even go one step further: Sira Rego, the youth minister, has suggested X should be prohibited altogether, because of the “flagrant violations of fundamental rights” taking place on the platform. She listed various issues, including the sexual deepfake images generated by Grok, and called the broader social media landscape “undemocratic” and controlled by “a few digital strongmen”. Elon Musk, of course, hit back, first posting on X: “Dirty Sánchez is a tyrant and a traitor to the people of Spain”, and an hour and a half later posting “Sánchez is the true fascist totalitarian.”
I am not going cheerlead for Musk here. On X specifically, I find the culture now often unpleasant, somewhere I visit out of habit and seldom linger. And while X seems to be a microcosm of the worst trends of social media today, the other major platforms have flaws too. Do read this excellent piece we recently published from Brazilian writer Nina Auras on Meta banning left-wing political accounts in her country.
But for those of us who work in defence of freedom of expression, the question is not whether platforms are flawed. The question is whether restricting access to them will strengthen our speech rights or weaken them.
At Index, we’re not neuroscientists studying the cognitive effects of scrolling and the impact of social media on the young (as a sidenote a landmark trial has just started in Los Angeles on the mental health effects of Instagram and YouTube, the outcome of which will be very insightful). Rather we’re advocates for people whose speech is curtailed, be it journalists, activists or others. From that vantage point, social media remains incredibly important. For the isolated and the marginalised, it can be a lifeline: a source of learning, solidarity and visibility. The platforms continue to help expose state violence, mobilise protest movements and even unseat autocrats. Our recent magazine issue on Generation Z explored exactly that, and for those of us paying close attention to events in Iran, social media provided some of the best access to on-the-ground information. It is for these reasons that, until recently, the governments most eager to ban social media have typically been the least tolerant of dissent. Yes, the calls from Australia, Spain, Greece, the UK and other countries are rooted in different, more admirable reasons. It’s just bans will still have the same impact.
None of the above excuses the abuse, the disinformation, the addictive design of algorithms and democratic interference. Those harms demand attention. But when solutions jump straight to prohibition without reckoning with what might be lost, they begin to resemble moral panics of the past – video games, rock ’n’ roll, the printing press, each once cast as existential threats to society that should be controlled no matter what the cost.
This article was commissioned for the Winter 2025 issue of Index on Censorship, Gen Z is revolting: Why the world’s youth will not be silenced, published on 18 December 2025.
Members of Gen Z – those born between 1997 and 2012 – have lived their entire lives within the all-encompassing glare of social media. More than 90% of 16-24-year-olds use such platforms.
Older generations often look on in shock at the level of sharing and over-sharing among young people. But in a world where cancellation has real-world consequences, there is growing evidence that the young are in fact imposing censorship upon themselves, particularly when it comes to unpopular political opinions.
18-year-old William Marsden is keenly aware of this.
“I don’t comment on TikTok, and I don’t comment on Instagram posts because other people I know will see it. Certain things on Instagram are funny, but some people might not think they’re a joke and they might get the wrong idea. You have to be careful with what you like and what you say so sometimes I don’t say anything,” he said.
Marsden is like a growing number of Gen Zers – censoring themselves on social media platforms because of the fear of being cancelled or because, in his words, “they might take the piss out of me”.
“I’m not big into typing comments because you never know what will get back to you and it could potentially affect future employment,” said fellow Gen Zer Harry Waller.
Yet there is a definite divide between in person and online, he said.
“If I’m with my mates, I know it’s comfortable and we’re all as bad as one another.”
Do Gen Zers censor themselves in real life for fear that their thoughts will be captured and shared online?
“Oh, absolutely, yeah,” said Tom Bond, another in the Gen Z demographic. “I possess some political opinions which are a bit outside the normal box and they could sometimes be misconstrued as offensive towards people, which isn’t their necessary intention. But if that were to be recorded and made online, it would perhaps get me in a spot of bother. Also, it’s very easy to take stuff out of context when you haven’t listened to a full conversation,” he said.
19-year-old Evelyn Scott says the fear of making rash comments and responses and having them available for future scrutiny is part of this.
“Since COVID, you can probably say more in person than you can online. It used to be very much like you could say whatever you wanted online and no one was going to track it to you. If you say one thing now, that can cause uproar. You can literally get found out.”
“I live by the rule that if you wouldn’t say it to someone’s face, you don’t say it online,” she said. “The people that are getting screen-shotted and clipped online for saying bad things, it’s because they’re not thinking about actually saying it in person and the consequences that has.”
She recalled a particular incident where this happened.
“Someone I was with in Scouts had something screenshotted of them and sent to loads of parents; it was sort of hate speech. We were all under 16. Police got involved. It’s treated the same as if someone literally did it in front of you.”
William Marsden says that Gen Z is becoming more careful about their public comments as a result of living in a world where everything can be recorded for posterity.
“At school, if you’re mucking about people can just take their phone out and record you. Suddenly everyone in the school’s seen a video of you doing something stupid with your mates. You’ll be immortalised if it ends up in the wrong place,” he said.
“There are some mistakes kids can’t afford to make, and social media is quite dangerous in that way. They can forever be living with that mistake,” he said.
Because of this permanence, more needs to be done to educate young people on social media. Children are being exposed to it from a very young age and even when they mature, a lack of education on how to use it, what not to say and how to behave online can still leave them open to making these potentially long-lasting mistakes.
Evelyn Scott said: “There is definitely a negative side the younger you are using it because you’re not as responsible. But I think it’s important to be educated about it and use it in the right ways because it can be a very positive thing for young people.”
Harry Waller shares his own experience at a much younger age of the difference between comments online and offline, particularly relevant in a world where governments are considering bans on social media for young people.
“I overstepped that barrier [of what I would say online]. Ever since then, I just didn’t do it because it wasn’t like me. I got too comfortable and I’d never do it again.”
Speaking to Index, Positive Social, an organisation dedicated to empowering young people on social media, said: “Pupils often talk about how difficult it is to switch off, how social comparison affects how they see themselves, and how online drama can spill into the classroom. While social media can be wonderful, it needs balance, boundaries and education.”
They added, “Social media itself isn’t inherently good or bad – it’s how we engage with it that matters. When young people are supported to use social media positively – for creativity, learning, connection and campaigning – it can be incredibly empowering. Our view is that we should focus on digital wellbeing. That means helping young people use social media in a way that benefits their lives”
“Age verification and greater platform accountability are essential parts of the solution but they’re not enough on their own. The reality is that millions of under-13s already use social media, often with or without parental awareness. We believe that alongside stronger regulation, education and trust-based monitoring are crucial. But the aim shouldn’t be surveillance, it should be support.”
Evelyn Scott sees the benefits of the freedom of social media but recognises the downsides too.
“Obviously there are cons that come with freedom to post, which is people having very, say, extremist opinions and just trying to show young people and not censoring it, corrupting younger people that don’t know any better about what to listen to.”
Harry Waller told Index: “Everyone complains that we have no freedom of speech, but I would say we do. After the Southport stabbing, people were saying on social media ‘we need to burn down where illegal immigrants are living’. That’s not right. We shouldn’t be using social media as a tool to spread hate.”
Tom Bond said social media is making it easier for people to become radicalised. “You find yourself within an echo chamber of people expressing the same precise views as you. It’s very easy to find yourself in a little bubble and content feeds with stuff personalised to you and you can form quite radical beliefs which you think to be normal.”
But Bond recognises the power of social media for good.
“The ability to express one’s beliefs on social media to a large audience is one of perhaps the main benefits,” he said. “Greta Thunberg, for example, she became a phenomenon within social media, and her views were sort of disseminated to a global audience and change occurred because of that”.
What do a book festival in Adelaide and a secondary school in Bristol have in common? Both were in the news this week after being mashed up in rows over Israel and Palestine and both for doing the same thing – cancelling speakers they’d invited. Neither organisation went looking for an argument but they found themselves at the centre of rows where reputations were trashed, as in the Australian case, and parents, students and a politician doubtless feel less safe, as in the Bristol case. Now most people looking at either of these cases will be less likely to invite controversial figures to schools – even a local MP – or to have outspoken speakers at book events.
The Adelaide Book Festival should have been a little more aware than the Bristol school that they might find themselves in a spot of bother. They invited the Palestinian Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah to appear at the festival. Abdel-Fattah is a novelist, lawyer and academic and had been asked to come and talk about her new book Discipline, published by the University of Queensland Press. The book ironically is about a journalist and academic navigating censorship in the wake of the Israel-Gaza war. In September, The Guardian in London, which has a large presence in Australia, interviewed her. The interviewer made clear that she was a controversial figure: the Australian Research Council Future Fellowship grant she had been using to create a digital archive of Arab activism had been suspended after criticism from Jewish groups. She’d made several anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist comments on social media, including saying that Zionists had “no claim or right to cultural safety”. And she’d already withdrawn from the Bendigo Writers Festival last August after a code of conduct was issued telling panellists to “avoid language or topics that could be considered inflammatory” when some 50 other authors walked out with her. Abdel-Fattah has made a point of being outspoken, and other authors had shown themselves inclined to follow her lead.
So there is no way that the Adelaide Book Festival could claim that they didn’t know. And if further proof be needed, she had spoken at the book festival two years and joined others in asking for New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman to be de-platformed. He didn’t come because of “scheduling issues”. If the book festival didn’t want her to speak, they could have quietly not invited her. They obviously felt she had important things to say.
But following the murder of Jewish people celebrating Hannukah on Bondi beach, Abdel-Fattah’s remarks looked very different, or as the board wanted to “reiterate” (before they resigned) in an apology to Abdel-Fattah about the way she was disinvited, “this is not about identity or dissent but rather a continuing rapid shift in the national discourse around the breadth of freedom of expression in our nation following Australia’s worst terror attack in history.” Abdel-Fattah, as you might expect, has hit back accusing the board of being “disingenuous”.
The Adelaide Book Festival is now in crisis and has been cancelled. Zadie Smith and 180 other participants, including the former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and the British novelist Kathy Lette, refused to appear in protest at the treatment of Abdel-Fattah. Rescinding her invitation to speak has meant the loss of an opportunity for difficult conversations about her views to be had, and a book festival brought down with it.
The Bristol Brunel Academy should not have expected to find itself in such a difficult position, because all the headteacher there had done was to invite his local MP to visit, on the topic of democracy no less. Except Damien Egan is vice-chair of Labour Friends of Israel and is married to an Israeli man. The school had some unionised teachers, who told them that if Egan came they would all wear keffiyehs (Palestinian scarves) and demonstrate outside the school along with parents and members of the public. School leaders took fright and cancelled the visit at the last moment.
The visit should have gone ahead, but the safeguarding of students at schools is all important and teachers can become easily spooked. The academy trust has now said they have taken police advice, and the visit will be rebooked. The Times has run a further story saying that the same teacher group boasted about cancelling a speaker from an Israeli tech firm at the school’s summer conferences. All this is in the wider context of a bitter political fight between Labour and the Green Party in Bristol, and a direct action protest movement around the Bristol-based Israeli arms company Elbit, for which Palestine Action activists are being prosecuted for aggravated burglary among other charges.
While it is understandable that the school, in this kind of atmosphere, might want to act with caution and also that the MP might feel aggrieved (though he has said nothing so far), it’s another matter how Steve Reed, the Secretary of State for Communities, waded in. He highlighted the case at a Jewish Labour Movement conference months after the incident thus: “I have a colleague who is Jewish, who has been banned from visiting a school and refused permission to visit a school in his own constituency, in case his presence inflames the teachers”. He went on to say it was “an absolute outrage” and vowed to hold school leaders to account.
It looks at least from the outside as if Reed was playing politics with the school. As a cabinet minister he is the government not a campaigner. Why hadn’t he just reported the issue to the Department for Education and Ofsted? It might well have been a serious immediate issue, particularly for any Jewish young people at the school. But let’s assume school leaders were trying to do the right thing. They have now found themselves in the middle of a battle between politicised teaching unions (who of course have the right to protest, but also to teach young people in a non-biased way) and a senior government minister inflaming the row between the Greens and Labour in Bristol, all fought under the proxy banners of Israel and Palestine.
The protesting teachers clearly don’t want a debate; the school and Egan perhaps do. Either way the real-world losers? Free expression and the students who are seeing grown-ups trying to shut each other down rather than learning about how to debate in a democratic society on difficult issues.
If we are to have a world where free expression is to be encouraged, literary festivals and schools should be safe spaces to talk about uncomfortable ideas. Instead, they are being laid waste by those who won’t stand by decisions to invite controversial speakers when the heat is on, and others who want to make political hay at the expense of young people. All this too shuts down a proper discussion of what is actually going on in the Middle East.