Prohibition doesn't eliminate the demand for social media in under-16s; it simply drives it underground, where parent visibility and accountability collapse. Tech savvy teens will sidestep mainstream platforms in favour of peer to peer systems. Many are already using private discord servers to chat with their schoolmates.

Like the speakeasies of the Prohibition era, a digital underground will emerge as the new medium of online communication. In the same way that western governments “fix” the housing crisis by inflating demand instead of increasing supply, they now try to solve social media excess by restricting access and forcing the youth toward a digital wild west.

The end result isn’t increased safety but opacity. In this fragmented digital ecosystem, parents, educators and regulators lose visibility, whilst digital subcultures multiply exponentially. Algorithmic and advertising exposure may shrink, but echo chambers, misinformation, and exploitation risk will expand. All this, just as AI goes mainstream and it becomes increasingly difficult to tell whether you're interacting with a human or a machine.

Liberating for the competent and opportunistic; extremely dangerous for the naïve.