Keir Starmer’s social media ban is a SNEAKY 'parting gift' to globalists before he's ousted

[00:00:00]Welcome to GB News Originals with me, Bev, here in Washington, D.C. So, the inability of human beings to put down mobile phones is destroying relationships and detonating families.

[00:00:12]Ask any parent of teens what causes the most conflict in their house, and I promise you they will say screens. The perpetual nag of put that down and the vanishing attention span.

[00:00:24]The boyfriend breakup that can't be left at the front door and the school bully who travels home in your kids' pocket.

[00:00:29]We don't need a government to tell us that these devices are harming our kids.

[00:00:32]We are painfully aware.

[00:00:35]But Starmer's social media ban on under 16s will do nothing meaningful to really help remove the addictive and destructive nature of these devices.

[00:00:45]Kids will find workarounds. Poor parents will always fake accounts to stop the nagging daughter, and some children will simply be allowed Snapchat by parents because they want to talk to their friends after school, as kids have always done.

[00:01:00]But be under no illusion. For all of us, this is the creaking of the digital cage door dressed up as a welcoming velvet rope.

[00:01:09]Just as the narrative control meant that arguing against unscientific lockdowns rendered you a granny killer, now arguing that this TikTok ban is wrong will make you a pedophile enabler.

[00:01:21]It does not. Every right-minded person wants kids to grow up safely. The pedophiles won't disappear. They will just go to gaming platforms or other sites under a VPN. They'll go to school gates, like in the olden days.

[00:01:35]If you have an imagination and you can see where this inevitably leads, you know that none of it is good, and it will change the relationship between the individual and the internet in the UK forever.

[00:01:47]The addictive nature of the algorithm is our true enemy. Call out the tech companies on that. Ask to see their research into targeted advertising. One of the most pernicious tales I've ever heard is that if your teen daughter takes a selfie and then deletes it, the phone will at that very moment deliver up, let's say, a makeup advert just to get her when she's at her weakest. So, why is it up to me rather than Keir Starmer to tell you about that? Have you ever heard him criticizing the tech bros whose children never hold a cell phone?

[00:02:23]No, not really. That might make chats around Davos table a bit awkward for him.

[00:02:29]Do you feel that any politician has ever helped parents and kids to tool up against this influence via apps that actually work? Not a single MP is begging teachers to get screens out of schools and homework entirely as they've done in Sweden.

[00:02:47]The antidote to staring at a wall, as one girl said in an interview today, is sport. It's music. It's drama clubs.

[00:02:55]Invest in our teens if you really want to get them out of their bedrooms.

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[00:04:37]>> I admit that parents should not be left to fight the largest technology companies in the world on our own. It is not a fair fight.

[00:04:45]I tell my kids, "That phone is designed to get you addicted. It's up to you to develop the discipline to put it down and turn it off. And as parents, we must model that behavior." Mealtimes with the phones out of sight, not routinely walking around with it in our hands all the time, charging them downstairs at night. It is not easy.

[00:05:09]But good parenting was never easy.

[00:05:12]Because the cost to us all of this policy is so huge that it is no wonder Starmer is using it as his parting gift before he is potentially ousted from office. He is forcefully fulfilling the ambitions of a global surveillance framework designed by his friends at the UN, the WHO, and the WEF. He will walk into a well-paid job at the NGO top table if he can just get this critical piece of digital infrastructure over the line.

[00:05:45]Because it's going to make a small number of people extremely rich.

[00:05:49]Let me ask you this. How do you stop a 13-year-old using Snapchat without checking the 30-year-old as well? You can't. So, every one of us is going to get our faces scanned. We are simply cut and pasting the Australian model where you might safely assume trials have proven successful. Not necessarily.

[00:06:10]Implemented only in December last year, it is too soon to tell if it's had any impact on the mental well-being of teenagers in regards to grooming, bullying, self-harm, or poor mental health.

[00:06:21]There is a demonstrable fall in child accounts, but how many of them have basically just faked being an adult and set up a new account? It does not prove that children are safer.

[00:06:33]We can watch and learn from Australia, but we cannot pretend that the experiment has already delivered a definitive verdict. It hasn't.

[00:06:39]Starmer described the ban as a huge step for our country. He said it is a statement of our values and part of a cultural transformation in how children grow up.

[00:06:52]But, the government has no evidence that a blanket ban will work better than targeted restrictions on harmful features such as those addictive algorithms. In reality, this will mean that before you as an adult read post, store a photo, or send a message, you'll be expected to show your papers and verify that you are a citizen that the government has pre-approved to access information.

[00:07:17]Who do they think they are?

[00:07:21]Empty our bins, fix our roads, run our hospitals, otherwise get out of our lives.

[00:07:29]The default setting of the UK used to be that the state left you alone unless you gave them a reason not to. This has been gradually eroded, much more quickly recently. It isn't a boot on the face.

[00:07:41]You would have rejected that, but it is slow erosion of your individual freedom.

[00:07:47]Now, you are presumed to be a suspect with a phone until you prove otherwise.

[00:07:52]They didn't ask you, "Do you mind if we build a national biometric database?"

[00:07:56]Because we would have said, "No, thanks.

[00:07:58]I'm all right without that." Instead, they effectively ran a pilot scheme around pornography. Almost 1 year ago, age checks for adult content went live in the UK, and predictably, Pornhub's UK traffic fell off by 77%.

[00:08:15]Not a bad thing.

[00:08:17]But, let's be honest. Sales of VPNs to protect privacy rocketed. How many of those went to teenagers whose parents can now not see their online predilections?

[00:08:29]There were no marches on the streets over this. No GB News panelists screaming outrage, because frankly, demanding porn access is generally not a hill that people will publicly die upon.

[00:08:41]But, the government paid attention, and then they turned to stage two.

[00:08:44]Apple and Google have now been ordered to install spyware that pokes through your photos on pain of criminal liability if they decline.

[00:08:53]Refusing to install state spyware would put tech executives in prison for up to 5 years.

[00:09:00]And remember, in September 2025, Starmer stood at Elect 1 and announced a mandatory digital ID scheme with the confidence of a man who assumed it would be popular.

[00:09:11]Britain's digital ID push isn't about streamlining paperwork. It's about hardwiring state power into everyday life.

[00:09:19]The British public responded with almost 3 million signatures on a single petition, the fourth biggest in parliamentary history.

[00:09:27]He totally underestimated you.

[00:09:30]Public support plummeted for digital ID from positive 35 to negative 14. That was the nation telling the Prime Minister a hard no. And who decides what platforms are dangerous? There's outrage online that Blue Sky, the so-called nice platform, is exempt from this ban.

[00:09:52]I took a cursory glance at it today, and it's a combination of sunset photos alongside the most critical, bitter socialists calling for bans and boycotts of anyone who steps outside their snipey, narrow lines. I can see why Keir Starmer likes it.

[00:10:10]This generation of 16-year-olds have been given the vote, but not the ability to read about politics online.

[00:10:18]Presumably, the BBC will do the job for the government.

[00:10:21]This government don't seem to care about stopping your child being stabbed in the neck by an undocumented migrant, but they do not want you to see the truth about such atrocities online.

[00:10:34]Social media, of course, is not the first technology to transform teenage life. I remember stretching the phone cord around into the hallway so I can have a conversation without my parents listening. Teenagers are hardwired to seek independence. They must have private conversations with friends. It's important. They've always wanted spaces where adults aren't listening. A Snapchat call to two friends is not the same as an algorithmically driven platform competing for a child's attention every waking hour. This debate has become far too simplistic. Social media is not pure poison.

[00:11:12]The real challenge lies in teaching young people how to live with technology because they have to do that for the rest of their lives. They are taught to cross the road, and they're taught about healthy eating. Why are we not teaching attention management? Why are we not teaching children practical techniques to put their phones down. How to recognize addictive design features, how to switch notifications off, how to create phone-free periods of time in a day, how to sleep without a device beside the bed, how to concentrate on one task at a time. These are life skills now, perhaps the most important life skills of all.

[00:11:53]A social media ban may help some families with compliant children who are scared of authority. It may reduce exposure to harmful content for some. It may slow down the relentless pressure of online life.

[00:12:06]Let's hope it does.

[00:12:08]But at what cost to our critical civil liberties?

[00:12:12]And no law can replace engaged and confident parents, empowered teachers, and children who have learned how to control technology rather than being controlled by it.

[00:12:25]Let me know what you think in the comments. Like and share this wherever you can, and subscribe to GB News on YouTube. See you again soon.