Celebrities like Love Island’s Molly Mae will never effectively educate young people about protection products and it is too late to start cutting Generation Alpha off from social media.
These were two of the key points of discussion during a panel debate about social media at Protect Z last week.
This morning, the government announced plans to prevent under 16s from accessing social media sites such as TikTok and YouTube.
The subject was a bone of contention at Protect Z last week where presenter and influencer Emily McCarthy maintained it is now too late to cut Generation Alpha (born between 2010 and 2025) from social media.
Too late
“Gen Z and the next generation will use social media – It is too far gone to now take it away,” McCarthy told delegates.
“In every single element of our lives – university, education, banking, everything is social media. It’s how we are using information.”
Working with social media platforms
McCarthy added that rather than taking social media away from young people, the government should be exploring how to better regulate it.
“I think for more traditional industries that aren’t yet there, they need to work with the social media platforms,” McCarthy continued.
“How can we regulate it? How can we make it a safer space?
“I think we’re at a point now where taking it away is only going to make the situation more desperate because it’s going to be unregulated.”
Molly Mae
Fellow panellist Sam Monaghan, protection adviser at London and Country Mortgages, meanwhile maintained that celebrities such as Molly Mae cannot effectively educate young people about protection.
“Molly Mae has a huge social media presence, but she’s never going to be able to educate people,” Monaghan said.
“She can raise awareness but not educate them.”
Monaghan added that information about protection products can generally be found on websites and online, but young people now tend to use social media sites such as TikTok for information.
“I think if there is more education about what the products are, how they work and benefit you, it will be much better for the industry because people will be much better educated and understand and get more value of products and get protected,” he concluded.