Children and Social Media

In response to growing concern about the effects of social media on children, the dominant instinct has often been to prohibit. While understandable, this reflects a familiar pattern: when a new challenge arises, reach first for the ban.

The Foundation is exploring a different response. Rather than simply excluding children from the digital sphere, we are interested in how a secure, ring-fenced, intelligently designed environment might be created that is attractive, engaging, and developmentally supportive for young people to want to participate in it.

An original proposal in this area was first developed some twenty years ago at the request of a concerned parent. With the arrival of AI, its fuller potential can now be revisited. That work is currently being updated in preparation for a future development partnership.

More participative government

Democracy, from its earliest forms, has always carried limitations. Over time, many of those limitations have become more visible and more serious. The concentration of decision-making power in relatively few hands is increasingly at odds with both modern conditions and human potential.

Today, however, the tools exist to imagine something better.

The Foundation is developing a contemporary manifesto for more participative public life, together with an initial proposal for widening meaningful public involvement in governance. Here too, AI may prove to be a timely enabler: not as a substitute for human judgement, but as a tool for more informed, more continuous, and more constructive civic participation.

Both initiatives reflect a wider conviction: that new conditions demand new designs.