14 Feb 2026 | Asia and Pacific, Australia, Europe and Central Asia, News, Spain, United Kingdom
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.
5 Feb 2026 | Europe and Central Asia, Features, United Kingdom
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”.
31 Dec 2025 | Asia and Pacific, China, Features, Volume 54.04 Winter 2025
This piece first appeared in 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.
Some 50 years after Mao’s successors began to open up China’s economy and transform the country, its explosive growth is slowing. Gone are the days when the economy doubled every three to five years and rags-to-riches stories were a dime a dozen.
Today, many lament that the possibility of reinventing one’s fate or guaranteeing a better future for one’s children feels like it’s vanishing.
China’s economy still has extraordinary bright spots, particularly in tech. Its supply chains of rare earth minerals, renewables and electric cars are cause for international envy and fear.
But many of the dividends of that technological progress are concentrated in a few hands, while the social mobility of the early reform years has ossified into a new class structure.
Terms such as neijuan (involution) and tang ping (lying flat) have become fashionable – the former refers to the unrelenting rat-race that is modern life while the latter is the temptation to bow out of the race completely. The Chinese mindset was already deeply competitive and cynical – traumatised, perhaps, by years of war, poverty, famine and communism.
But a new type of disillusionment is spreading across society as a whole, where even “eating bitterness” (a Chinese phrase meaning to endure hardship without complaint) isn’t enough to change your life.
Beijing fears this negativity. While it isn’t always directed at the government, the line between just moaning and blaming the authorities is fine – after all, all-encompassing rule means all-encompassing blame when things go wrong. The government also fears that younger generations will become lazy and simply give up. It needs them to strive – but to strive with hope, not despair.
So, while some arms of the government are looking to reinvigorate economic growth and diffuse the rewards of technology through society, the censors are hard at work on a new mission. For the last couple of years, it has no longer been just dissent they are policing but “gloomy emotions”. In the China of today, censorship isn’t just about what’s not there but moulding what is.
In September, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the country’s top internet regulator which reports directly to the president, Xi Jinping, began another one of its regular Clear and Bright campaigns to sanitise the internet. This time its focus was explicitly on four types of content: that which polarises, that which spreads panic, that which incites hostility and online violence, and that which exaggerates negative sentiments.
Three high-profile influencers fell victim – their censoring dubbed by Chinese social media as the sanlianfeng (the three consecutive censures). One was 27-year-old Hu Chenfeng, whose main gimmick is cost of living videos demonstrating how far money goes in an average supermarket. Another was Zhang Xuefeng, a viral educator who advises students (and their parents) on what degrees are the most lucrative. And the third was Lan Zhanfei, a professional gamer turned travel vlogger who documents his proudly bachelor life.
As ever, the censors didn’t give reasons for their censure, leaving others on social media to piece together the clues. It seems possible that they were each emblematic of different types of negativity.
Hu Chenfeng, for example, is interested in economic inequality in the country. The first video that got him in trouble was of a 78-year-old grandmother from Nanchong, made in 2023. In it she tells him that her only regular income is her pension of 107 yuan each month. Hu takes her shopping to show the viewer exactly how much food 107 yuan (or $15) can get in a Chengdu supermarket. It is some rice, flour, eggs and a few pork chops.
The video blew up within hours, with many viewers shocked at the level of poverty that still existed in the country – hadn’t the government already declared victory over absolute poverty? It took only a few hours for the video to be taken down, with Hu’s accounts on multiple platforms censored.
Hu returned to social media later that year, but his videos were much less politically sensitive – for example conducting cost of living experiments in other countries – so his latest censure came as a surprise.
A WeChat blog from the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee following Hu’s cancellation gives a clue. It refers to the tendency of “certain vloggers” to divide society into classes and specifically calls out the use of Apple and Android as signifiers for people’s wealth. Hu had been using brand names as adjectives: he described anything high-end and good quality as Apple (Apple people, Apple lifestyles, Apple cars, Apple universities etc), with Android the defective, low quality, opposite end. Left unsaid was that Chinese-made phones (such as Huawei and Xiaomi) are all Androids.
“You have to ask what hidden arrows exist behind these social media accounts?” the blog asks. It says that the Apple-Android divide politicises people’s phone brand choices, sowing social division. Separately, the blog also spells out the link between Android and indigenous Chinese brands, going as far as to say that Hu is effectively “handing a knife to those forces who would choke off ‘Made in China’”. Hu was not only politicising even gadget choices but was actively unpatriotic.
As for Zhang Xuefeng, there are two theories for why he got in trouble. First, his advice tends to be incredibly cynical – he has advised youngsters to avoid studying journalism in favour of more lucrative, practical degrees such as civil engineering. Nanfang News, an outlet under the umbrella of the Guangdong provincial government, attacked Zhang. “Education is a 100-year strategy, it shouldn’t be hijacked by an impatient commercial logic,” it fretted.
But the restrictions on his social media presence – not a total ban but a temporary limit from getting more followers – also came around the time that a video of him was leaked.
In the clip, Zhang raves about the 3 September military parade. He goes on to pledge that “the day that the guns sound” – referring to an invasion of Taiwan – his company will donate 100 million yuan (£10.8 million) to the military campaign, half of that from him personally.
Could this statement have been seen as boasting about a level of wealth out of reach for the common Chinese? Or perhaps as goading Beijing on to a military invasion which it wants to reserve maximum flexibility on?
In the case of Lan Zhanfei, it might have been simply that the travel vlogger was enjoying his single life too much.
He’s known for saying things such as “if you don’t marry, you won’t go broke”. In a country struggling with youth disillusion and declining fertility, the CAC possibly decided that a role model like Lan was not good at all.
Both Lan and Zhang are now back on their usual platforms after a temporary timeout. Hu, however, is yet to be seen. One presumes that such lucrative streamers will demand clearer explanations from the CAC in private and the regulator, in turn, will demand less negative content. The smartest influencers comply but, even if their livelihoods are saved, they are defanged.
With the latest Clear and Bright campaign, the government is confirming its direction into even more intervention – now not satisfied with erasing just political dissent but also expressions of any wider societal disillusionment.
Censors are now curators of a more cheerful online community. But the clear and bright world they create is at risk of being more and more detached from the reality that many Chinese live in.
12 Dec 2025 | Americas, Brazil, News
Brazilian left-wing influencer Thiago Torres, best known as Chavoso da USP (roughly translated as the University of São Paulo’s swaggy chav), has faced increasing political persecution in the last months. This reached international levels last month when Thiago’s main Instagram profile, with more than one million followers, was taken down by Meta.
Thiago then started using an old backup Instagram account with 385,000 followers, which was also taken down after allegations that it had been created to circumvent the previous block. Arbitrarily and without possibility of appeal, Meta blocked all access to his accounts and is set to permanently delete their content. A warning on Instagram said that the account “does not follow Community Standards” although the company did not specify which specific rules had been breached. Even after a preliminary injunction was issued on the morning of 20 November that forced Meta to return Thiago’s main account under threat of a fine, three other accounts were taken down later that same evening.
By maintaining the block on the influencer, Meta is involved in yet another case of big tech insubordination to Brazilian justice according to politicians. Federal Congresswoman Sâmia Bomfim, from PSOL (Freedom and Socialism Party), classified the event as a “direct attack on freedom of speech and the work of those who denounce injustices within Brazil.” Thiago sees it as “an offensive against progressive, mainly radical, left-wing voices”.
This is not the first time Meta has taken down accounts with large numbers of followers linked to the Brazilian left. In August this year, historian and influencer Jones Manoel, former candidate for governor of Pernambuco with the PCB (Brazilian Communist Party) and the Brazilian influencer with the most growth on the platform since June, was arbitrarily banned from Instagram. In October, activist and comedian Tiago Santineli also had his 850,000 followers account blocked, following online comments about the death of Charlie Kirk.
Since 9 December 2025, members of parliament from PSOL, PT (Worker’s Party), and left-wing news outlets have reported that their profiles “don’t appear in searches, can’t be tagged, and [that] their reach has plummeted in an orchestrated manner”, according to Federal Congresswoman Fernanda Melchionna. This is known as shadow-banning.
The bans follow a dispute between big tech companies and the left wing government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva which dates from January 2025, when Brazil’s Attorney General’s Office sent an extrajudicial notification to Meta because of the company’s decision to stop using independent fact-checkers. The concern was that this would further exacerbate the problem of “fake news”, which became prevalent in the 2018 and 2022 election processes, particularly on the part of the Brazilian right wing. A major dispute between the Brazilian judiciary and Elon Musk’s X also took place last year, resulting in the social network being blocked in the country until Musk complied with court orders.
The regulation of big tech companies – largely similar to what the EU has instigated – is considered by the current government as a matter of national sovereignty. In July, President Trump sent a letter to Brazil’s president, Lula, imposing a massive 50% tariff that rendered the export of a range of Brazilian products to the USA unfeasible. According to the letter, the measure came as retaliation for the sanctions against big tech and in support of former president Jair Bolsonaro, a representative of the Brazilian far right and ally of Trump who was convicted for attempted coup d’état.
In his speech at the UN General Assembly in September, President Lula said that “even under unprecedented attack, Brazil chose to resist and defend its democracy. There is no justification for the unilateral and arbitrary measures against our institutions and our economy. The aggression against the independence of the judiciary is unacceptable.”
It is not only in Brazil that US intervention in favour of big tech been felt. Back in January, Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg clearly stated on the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast that “the US government has a role in basically defending [big tech] abroad”.
In the same week that Brazil hosted COP30 and witnessed the preventive arrest of Bolsonaro, the suspension of five accounts belonging to a left-wing influencer shows that big tech might also have a role in defending the US government’s interests abroad in Brazil.
Researchers like the Brazilian academic Walter Lippold denounce what they call “digital colonialism”, the interconnection between imperialist interests and big tech. To Brazilian sociologist Sérgio Amadeu, “online social networks and platforms controlled by big tech companies are geopolitical structures increasingly aligned with the far right.” In June, at seminars held by Bolsonaro’s right-wing Liberal party (PL), executives from Meta gave workshops teaching how to use AI and achieve greater reach on the platform.
Born and raised in Brasilândia, an outlying neighbourhood of São Paulo, Thiago Torres first rose to prominence as a social sciences student at the University of São Paulo.
Ranked many times as the best university in Latin America, the University of São Paulo subscribes to a national public education project aimed at social development. Despite this, USP remains elitist in the social and racial makeup of both its faculty and students. Thiago spoke about the way this composition shaped the production of knowledge within USP, and used his platform to share social theory with a wider public.
Now graduated and a teacher, Thiago has become known for denouncing cases of political corruption and police violence. Overtly anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist, it’s not surprising that his head is wanted by public officials and companies who benefit from the country’s social division.
In August this year, Thiago was called to testify in the controversial CPI dos Pancadões, a parliamentary commission inquiring into street funk parties. Under the pretext that they disturb public order, it is common for the military police to raid pancadões, using extreme violence and murdering the young people present, many of whom are from racial minorities and come from lower social strata.
Thiago’s account dedicated to police violence, @fim.da.pm (“End the Military Police”), is among those blocked by Meta. The company had until 28 November to return the influencer’s main account, but this didn’t happen.
“Instagram will face a daily fine for each day it fails to comply [with the judiciary decision]”, Thiago explained. “But it’s a relatively small fine for them, so it’s possible they might disregard the court order.” Unfortunately, this seems to be the case.
