Will 2025 be a year of reckoning for America’s relationship with social media? That certainly looks to be the direction of travel. After years of the China hawks in Congress circling, Tiktok faces an outright US ban in the new year unless its Beijing-based parent company, Bytedance, can fight it in the courts. Florida has its own under-14s social media ban coming in from mid-January, pending an ongoing legal pushback, with other states contemplating following suit. Meanwhile, X – the nightmare formerly known as Twitter – has been shedding users by the millions in recent months. The exodus has been prompted for some by its owner, Elon Musk, and his proximity to incoming president Donald Trump but also by a sense that the “digital town square” has lost its way – and, I would argue, its marbles.

The anxious generation: Are phones deleterious to childhood?

In a country that typically balks at regulation, especially when it comes to the pipes and organs of public discourse, the boldness of lawmakers to get involved speaks to the tenor of constituents and their demand for action. In 2024 the release of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation, which posits that smartphones, social media and being constantly online is deleterious to childhood, was a milestone moment in this shift. Commentators of all political stripes weighed in on the book’s most worrying prognoses and many parents took heed, in some cases successfully lobbying their children’s schools to ban phones in classrooms.

The closeness between Musk and president-elect Donald Trump (himself an avid user of social media) means that, at federal level, the will to rein in these platforms will probably be limited. But in homes and schools around the US, there’s growing unease about the reach they have, especially into young people’s lives. Australia’s blanket ban on under-16s using social media is, in principle, anathema to many Americans’ notion of free speech. Seeing so many cheering on the Aussies feels like a watershed moment.

Christopher Lord is Monocle’s executive editor. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.