Jen Persson🌻

#ICYMI on Oct 7, the ICO published its executive summary from a compulsory #audit of the Department for Education with implications for over 21 million people in the National Pupil Database in England ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/… #education #privacy #ChildRights #GDPR

@Cyberleagle It’s going to end up really badly everywhere all at once isn’t it. Not sure if any of the evidence-based work matters at this point.

When your trade is votes, your currency is headlines and to the noisiest go the spoils.

@guy_herbert Medical evidence based submissions I'm seeing are problematic as (a) assume causation (b) within their own populations eg clients of a psychiatrist employed by the Home Office (itself a specific scope) not "a % across the whole population including those children we never see".

"Social media is the new smoking, medical leaders say" [Social media is taking OUR advertising, newspaper leaders say.]

On #SocialMediaBan consultation closing Tuesday: if your media can only wheel out the same campaign-medics with their own health evidence on the effects of social media, maybe producers should question the medical evidence they have a bit more.

Reminder: social media do not base accounts on consent. There is no min age at which children can lawfully use social media. There is no such thing as a digital age of consent. #OnlineSafety #SocialMediaBan #AV #AgeVerification Whack-a-mole bans don’t work mollyrosefoundation.org/more-than-60-o…

@miss_mcinerney Hope links may be useful—I’m adding published consultation responses as I see them. The compliance update esafety.gov.au/sites/default/… and what MRF surveyed from Australia mollyrosefoundation.org/more-than-60-o…

@miss_mcinerney Driving does not require ID. States require ID so drivers are traceable, insured, exclude on individual capabilities assessed after training and passed a test. There is no necessary reason for ID just to chat to friends. “Roads” should be accessible to all defenddigitalme.org/age-gating-the…

Arguing that social media bans for u16s ‘won’t work’ because children will still use them is a weird argument. Children sometimes still smoke or drive. Doesn’t mean the laws ‘don’t work’. But there IS an interesting question as to what counts as social media…

@miss_mcinerney Didn’t hear it but the Australian evidence is there—people migrate platforms, you are just playing whack a mole; the evidence on loss of privacy hasn’t been done yet by the Oz academic panel but we have — out later. Molly Rose both surveyed in Australia and is opposed to a ban.

@TheABB On Australia, the evidence is mixed, they said on Today, and the tech advocacy lady agreed - too early to say, she said.

@miss_mcinerney On the question “what is social media” here’s a thought piece from CRIN, asking the same thing; home.crin.org/the-big-debate… but we’re also asking if it’s even the right question, in a series home.crin.org/the-big-debate…

@miss_mcinerney The evidence from Australia shows their bans or age based restriction, does not achieve the aims, plus it makes every person required to perform age gating to get the access their age allows with effects on privacy and anonymity; that seems a good definition of “won’t work” imo.

CRIN. (Feb 2026). To ban or not to ban?: That should not be the question. home.crin.org/the-big-debate… #SocialMediaBan #ChildRights UK #OnlineSafety consultation #VPN #AV #data Part 1 in the CRIN big debates series. Are govts even asking the right questions?

CRIN. (2026). Letting kids on social media is like sending them to Mars (and other bizarre analogies). 🚀 home.crin.org/the-big-debate… #SocialMediaBan #ChildRights UK #OnlineSafety consultation #VPN #AV #data Part 2 in the big debates series. Understanding and negotiating the topic.

VPNs for children: Villains, Predators, Nastiness? More like Visibility; Privately Negotiated. home.crin.org/the-big-debate… Banning VPNs would fail to effectively address the underlying risks children face online, and introduce more. #SocialMediaBan #ChildRights #OnlineSafety #VPN

Why an industry that brought £8.8bn to UK economy last year faces uncertain future news.sky.com/story/britains…

@naomicfisher And then we use those grades to pigeon-hole each one on their record both they and their parents can see on day one of sixth form—against which for the next 2 years they are told they are above, at, below, or significantly below expected target grades for their next set of exams.

This time of year, we put our 16-year-olds through a coming-of-age ritual. We make them sit in rows and write down things they have spent the last two years trying to memorise. We pit them against the clock, and prevent them from talking to each other. We tell them that this is the most important thing that they will ever do and their future life depends on it. We don’t just do this once. For most of them, we make them sit in rows and write things down between twenty and thirty separate times in the space of about six weeks. Maths, English, History, French, Biology….Again and again, they have to keep at it. Each time, we tell them how important it is and they better not have an off-day or be ill. Then we take their papers and we rank them. For some, the result will be accolades and glory. For others, failure and retakes. We know for sure that this will always be true, because these rituals that we call exams are designed to rank them. A third will always fail. There would be no top grades if we didn’t also have the bottom. It isn’t possible for them all to pass. And yet, every year, we talk as if this was not true. We pretend that it would be possible for them all to succeed, if only they and their teachers worked harder. Politicians talk about raising standards and accountability. We pretend that the problem is them not working hard enough, not an exam system designed so that hundreds of thousands fail. We blame them, not the exams. For the truth is that we have a coming-of-age ritual for our teenagers which involves a third of them being told they haven’t met the grade, that they are not good enough. We launch them into adult life telling them that they will carry the stigma of not understanding quadratic equations for ever. We put them all through intense stress, and then when some of them cave in we say they have anxiety and send them to see a therapist. And then we’re surprised when many of them say they just can’t carry on, that they don’t see the point. They don’t see potential in the future for themselves. We need to take a step back and ask ourselves why we do this to our teenagers. For the problem isn’t our young people. It’s not their fault that a third of them fail and many are chronically stressed. The problem is what we make them do. We’ve designed a coming-of-age system with a very high cost in human misery. Every year a new crop of teens will come of age, and despite their distress we just push them harder. We need to ask ourselves whether this is really the best we can do for our teenagers. We urgently need to think again.

@Psythor @markpack We’ve a major problem in education with secondary regs used to grow national data policy affecting millions at speed without checks-and-balances or parli oversight—year on year, DfE grows the sensitive, named data without telling families and gives it away defenddigitalme.org/2026/04/29/pup…

@Psythor @markpack Secondary regs will be used to confirm which national ID will be used for everyone in state education (starting as a child) to join up health and education data without any safeguards in place—lack of scrutiny (of a “pilot”), not speed, is at stake (pp8-9 defenddigitalme.org/wp-content/upl…)

New YIMBY Pod! We speak to @markpack about the problem with Secondary Legislation - and how it is slowing down government. And I bore Martin by finally talking on the pod about this little thing called the Postcode Address File. abundancepod.com/p/the-problem-…

@kateferguson4 Evidence from Australia is that a #SocialMediaBan does the opposite of keeping children safe—No10 policy chiefs would be making an absurd capitulation to outrage, that won’t ‘work’, requiring age #ID for all and lead to even less favourable opinion of govt coe.int/en/web/portal/…

EXCL: Sir Keir Starmer is expected to ban social media for under 16s. A government consultation on curbs ends on Tuesday & no final decision will be taken until after that. But I understand No10 policy chiefs have privately said they expect a total ban thesun.co.uk/news/39197313/…