We’ve been talking to Gen Alpha and their Millennial parents about social media for years at Beano Brain, and there’s no shortage of opinions.

If you’ve followed our blog, you’ll know we’ve explored this topic from many angles, through the voices of our Trendspotter kids, through research, and sometimes via very personal reflections from our team.

More than almost any other area we dive into, it’s hard to separate professional opinion from personal opinion, especially if you’re also a parent, and perhaps that’s what makes social media such a uniquely difficult topic. So today I’ll be sharing both.

Back in 2023, we were already hearing the tensions loud and clear from both kids and Millennial parents.

Parents told us they were trying to create the “perfect” environment for their children, safe, nurturing, future-ready, while wrestling with a digital world evolving faster than they could keep up with. At the same time, kids were telling us that social media, games, platforms were at the centre of their world: homework was on WhatsApp groups and digital platforms, their friend groups extended through gaming and group chats and YouTube was their inspiration, their learning hub, and sometimes a playdate.

Over years, this tension intensified, and privately I kept coming back to a very uncomfortable question: Have we, as adults, been sleepwalking into the situation that now requires a ban?

Because while we debate whether Gen Alpha is too glued to screens, I can’t help noticing something else: Millennial parents may be the most phone-attached parents we’ve ever seen (certainly more so than Gen Z).

This normalisation of being attached to a device (mostly phone) is mirrored in kids’ behaviour. With the significant difference that ‘social media’ is used quite differently by kids and teens.

A conversation can start in a game, continue in a group chat, move into a meme, then resurface in a video. They experience it as a sum of parts, not as one app.

They need to stay connected to friends, participate in culture, discover trends and build identity. While the social media ban might change the entry points, it won’t remove these motivations.

So, will the ban simply become another obstacle for Gen A to work around? From everything we hear from kids, I suspect the answer is yes.

As we’ve said before at Beano Brain: if regulation tightens, behaviour doesn’t disappear, it adapts.

They’ll find workarounds, borrow access, migrate sideways, and the worlds that social platforms provide will be replaced, partially or fully, by new ones.

Which brings me back to the adults. I increasingly see this ban less as a wake-up call for kids, and more as a wake-up call for us grown-ups, in particular parents and tech brands.

Be the change you want to see. Parents, we need to put our phones down and model the relationship with technology we want our children to have. Tech companies: build digital spaces with kids in mind from the start because they will find you! And brands, stay close to young people but also represent them. You have huge influence with them. In a fractious world brands hold some of the last vestiges of trust - step up to that responsibility.

I heard yesterday an expert describe Gen Alpha as a social media cultural experiment and that’s certainly true. But It’s not too late. We all need to step up to the plate and start recognising our role in creating the digital world they have inherited.