Risk

This chapter examines the role that narrow conceptualisations of risk play in the appeal to public authorities for legislative solutions for social media harms against children. Situating this problem in terms of the moral and media panics that turn on reified notions of childhood, the chapter argues that the construction of online risks in terms of “porn,” “predators,” and “peers” overlooks the structural context that gives rise to these risks. In this context of technocratic hegemony, protective proposals for age-specific social media bans risk an interference with children’s rights to participation. The chapter argues that addressing the full range of risks faced by children in the digital age requires that we confront the asymmetries of power that accept harms against children as inevitable.