There was such a simple solution

to implementing the law banning under 16s from social media. All it would have taken was a ban on owning a phone which could access it. 

Yes, there are phones which allow you to do no more than make and receive calls, make and receive text messages and even get alerts or alert others for reasons of safety. Just as the government has provided many young people with other devices on which to do their schoolwork they could have seen to this. 

What if they had provided young people with bright yellow, lime green, orange or pink phones that could do only these things? It would have been easy to see if a young person was using a phone that only had the capacity for these things. 

Yes, there would be a cost involved but the cost of implementing the law would have been placed where it should have been placed. It would have been on parents and the government, on us as taxpayers. Those young people who already have phones could have been required to hand them until that magical sixteenth birthday and provided with the lesser device.

There is a growing belief that the new law is not simply about protecting young people from the harm of social media but about something more sinister than that. I have talked at length with two politicians who admit that the idea of being able to monitor everyone all the time would be very valuable if you want to remain in government. It would provide an excellent control mechanism if news could be filtered out or in on all electronic devices.

We already have a compliant media, indeed the major news sources are claiming credit for having the ban brought in. They are saying it is about "safety", as if lack of access to social media will prevent bullying. It won't of course. It may even cause greater harm to be done to some. It won't stop predators either. They will find other ways to ply their vile trade - as they have done for centuries.

The size of the fines if the "big tech" companies do not comply is perhaps the clearest indication that the law is about more than the safety of young people. This is about the government trying to wrest back control, about them being able to view everything we do. 

I have no time for the likes of Elon Musk but the fine the EU has imposed should be ringing alarm bells...particularly when they went ahead and tried to use the very system they were complaining about to their own advantage.