Chris Stokel-Walker

They can watch cartoons for five-year-olds if you are a 13-year-old, which I'm sure will thrill the 13-year-olds of the UK.

I mean, that is an interesting distinction, right?

Because YouTube sits outside of this whole thing in a weird way, yet is included in the social media ban.

And I'm not really certain why, other than perhaps...

Keir Starmer doesn't like Mr. Beast or something like that.

Nobody likes Mr. Beast.

But there's a world of YouTube outside of Mr. Beast, Helen, which you can watch.

And many of the people on there are actually really useful and really informative.

That touches on, I think, one of the problems here, which is it doesn't feel like this whole thing has been thought through necessarily because actually...

you could say, well, it's certain types of content on YouTube that shouldn't be watched, but actually it's just all of YouTube.

And so good luck to you if you are in the GCSE class of 2027 trying to do some last minute revision on YouTube for important, complicated stuff, because you are not going to be able to.

Whoever fights the least against the government to have the responsibility for that is the truth, Helen.

We've seen this not just in the UK, but we've seen this in Europe and elsewhere.

There is a game of passing the parcel going on here.

And every company in and around the tech space doesn't want to be the one still holding it when the music stops.

So we've also seen that the tech companies themselves saying they believe it's not their responsibility and saying, actually, it would be far easier.

Yeah.

for the device yeah exactly everybody is everybody is passing the buck here they say that it would be easier for this to be a one-size-fits-all approach done on the device the government seems to be saying that they want it to be done individually at a social media app by app level that to me seems like madness but then truthfully the whole thing to me seems like madness

I think that's certainly the view of those who ascribe to Donald Trump's sensibilities on this.

And frankly, a lot of the tech sector at the minute is very much playing to the Trump administration because they know that that is the ultimate body that they have to answer to.