Governments around the world are grappling with how to protect children from online harm, but the Australians are going furthest with a ban on social media for under-16s. There’s strong public support for a move like this in countries around the world and if it works in Australia, the UK should follow suit, writes Herald columnist Rebecca McQuillan

Years ago, I remember a friend of mine, a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, telling me how much he hated the idea of banning things. The left always wants to ban stuff, he would say, and though the intentions were good, it interfered with people’s freedoms. This friend railed against the 2006 ban on smoking in public places, thundering about the “nanny state”. Later, however, he came round. Partly this was because the ban was about smoking, and it was hard to argue smoking did anyone any good.

But he also accepted that when it came to freedom of choice, the issue was not clear cut. For one thing, non-smokers had never had a choice before about inhaling second-hand fag smoke, which clearly wasn’t fair. But it went deeper than that. The indoor smoking ban prompted a debate about whether consumers who use potentially harmful products are exercising real free choice when they are being subjected to powerful marketing or social pressures. It made us ask ourselves: should responsibility for avoiding harmful products always rest entirely with the individual or should the state sometimes intervene?

In Scotland we decided that the state had a role, but the controversy around bans never goes away, bubbling up every time the government restricts anything, from free plastic bags to happy hours to single use........

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