When something is not working, abandon it. The policy maker and politician, the latter often inclined to populist temptation and the endless tapping for votes, will decide to make a state of wrongheadedness even worse. The evidence is starting to grow that Australia’s daft delving into the world of regulating a child’s access to social media (the arbitrary limit when social media virginity is shed is 16 years) is falling flat. Here, we have the continued, easy target that keeps nourishing the blundering, self-pleasuring prefects in Canberra: irresponsible companies with their social media platforms luring children into a cyberworld of harmful content and damaging consequence. We also have the object of holy salvation: children untouched by the world. Punish the social media platform (though in small spanks rather than vigorous lashings) or at the very least convince them to place age-set limits to accounts; spare the unfortunate, ignorant child supposedly incapable of navigating technology they can master in…

Keir Starmer said on Monday he would introduce sweeping changes to social media regulation to better protect the wellbeing of children when they are online.