If an adolescent spends six hours a day on their phone, public discourse knows who is to blame. The adolescent, for lacking discipline. Or their parents, for failing to set boundaries. The proposed solution is always the same size as the identified culprit: more willpower, more parental control, an app to measure screen time, a family pact. The problem is framed as individual, and the response is as well.
In January 2026 the Royal College of General Practitioners, the professional body of British family doctors, said the opposite. Digital harms should be understood as a population health issue, not merely a matter of individual choice or parental responsibility. And it adds: children are developing within digital systems designed to maximise engagement, not wellbeing.
Designed. Not 'apps that sometimes hook you', but built, calibrated and optimised to hold attention for as long as possible, because their business depends on that time. Asking a minor to resist that with willpower is asking them to beat a system fine-tuned by thousands of engineers precisely so that they do not win. And then, when they lose, telling them the problem is their character.
A note from the British Parliament's scientific office, also from 2026, reviewed the evidence on social media and youth wellbeing and concludes that most of the studies are observational and short-term: they show associations, not causes. The measured effects are often small or inconsistent. Benefits and harms coexist to the point that the same thing can do one person good and another harm. For many adolescents in vulnerable groups, social media is where they find others like themselves, where they find support they do not have elsewhere. It is not, by any means, pure harm.
It cannot be claimed that social media causes this distress. That sentence, so often repeated, goes further than the evidence allows. And whoever says it is, without realising it, doing the individual approach a favour, because if social media were a simple toxin the solution would be simple: step away from it. The reality is worse: there is no toxin to step away from; there is a designed environment that it is not realistic to step away from, because it is where social life, school life and emotional life happen, and within that environment some things care for you and others erode you, mixed together, depending on who you are and what you run into.
What the RCGP's position does, and why I find it important, is not to demonise technology but to shift the question. It begins to ask who designed the conditions in which one is asked to exercise self-control, and the answer does not lie with the child or their home. It lies in the design decisions of platforms whose commercial incentives, the parliamentary note itself states, have barely been studied, because almost all research measures usage time rather than the design that produces it.
A system is built to extract something from people, attention in this case, and when that system produces a cost, the cost is handed back to the individual, formulated as a defect of their character. Pollution is the fault of whoever does not recycle. Precariousness, of whoever does not retrain. Sedentary living, of whoever lacks willpower. And being hooked, of whoever does not switch off their phone. In every case someone designed the system, takes the profit, and has also managed to make the person harmed feel that the failure is their own. It is a double externalisation: of the cost and of the blame.
The RCGP names this as a modern determinant of health, which is nothing more than one of those structural conditions, like housing, income, or air, that determines how healthy a population is before any individual makes a single decision. Placing platform design into that category is to state that this is not a matter of habits, but of the conditions in which one lives, of the same order as the water one drinks. And conditions are not fixed with willpower. They are fixed by changing who is responsible for them.
None of this implies that personal discipline is unimportant, that parents have no role, or that the solution lies in prohibition. The Royal College of General Practitioners itself, which supports a structural approach, cautions that any measure must be evidence-based and does not claim that a general ban would be effective. Furthermore, the parliamentary note recalls that some experts view this entire debate as a moral panic constructed upon misinterpreted data. It is not that platforms are the proven cause of harm, as this has not been demonstrated, but rather that the responsibility for a designed environment cannot rest entirely upon those born into it.
The question 'whose fault is it' is badly framed as long as it points at the user, at the family. A minor did not choose the design of the apps where their life takes place, just as nobody chooses the quality of the air in their city. They can be taught to breathe better. They cannot be asked to clean the air on their own.
This is a sensitive subject. If you are personally affected, consider seeking professional support.
On the open conversation
This text is based on two British documents from 2026: the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology note on social media and youth wellbeing, which underscores that the evidence is primarily correlational and that benefits and harms coexist, and the position of the Royal College of General Practitioners, which proposes treating digital harms as a population health issue rather than one of individual responsibility. I do not argue that social media causes this distress, which the evidence does not allow anyone to claim; I argue something different, that the responsibility for an environment designed to maximise engagement cannot be offloaded entirely onto the individual born into it. It is an open debate, with experts even warning of excessive alarm, and I reflect that here. If anyone wishes to intervene from public health, paediatrics, product design or technology policy, this notebook remains open. This is a delicate subject; anyone struggling with their relationship with screens, or supporting someone who is, would do well to seek professional support, and if you wish, I can help you find where.
Sources
Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (UK), POSTnote 780, 'Impacts of social media on children and young people', 20 August 2026, DOI 10.58248/PN780. Most of the evidence is observational, cross-sectional, and short-term; it shows associations, not direct causality; effects are often small or inconsistent; benefits and harms may coexist. The document also notes that some experts consider the discourse surrounding these harms to reflect a 'moral panic'.
Royal College of General Practitioners, 'Digital harms and children – RCGP position', January 2026. 'Digital harms should be understood as a population health issue, not simply a matter of individual choice or parental responsibility'; minors 'are developing within digital systems designed to maximise engagement rather than wellbeing'; digital harms as 'a modern determinant of health'. The RCGP demands that interventions be 'evidence-based' and does not claim that a general ban would be effective.
Both documents are, respectively, an institutional synthesis of evidence and a professional policy position; neither is an original causal study.