Downing Street invited bereaved parents this week to discuss social media regulation, with families holding up pictures of their deceased children before heading inside.
The message from Number 10 was deliberate and pointed: social media is causing a wave of deaths among young people across Britain.
The problem for the government is that the available data does not support that central claim.
Official ONS figures show that teenage suicide rates today are actually lower than they were during the late 1980s and 1990s.
Rates remain exceptionally low, and there is no data showing a statistically significant rise in teenage suicides compared to previous decades.
There has, however, been an unusual rise in suicide among one specific demographic: men in their 40s and 50s, who are not typically heavy social media users.
Bereaved parents should not be blamed or belittled, and it is entirely understandable that they unite around shared experiences and campaign for change.
But the government’s own analysis of Martyn’s Law, introduced after a campaign by the mother of Manchester Arena bombing victim Martyn Hett, found its costs massively outweighed benefits, producing a net present value of negative £2.6bn to Business.
Among the parents who visited Downing Street was Esther Ghey, mother of murdered teenager Brianna Ghey, who has found purpose in social media campaigning since her daughter’s killing.
However, the killers of Brianna Ghey, Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe, were found to have accessed illegal videos of torture and murder on the dark web, not mainstream social media platforms.
The pair used sophisticated tools to evade existing restrictions and access sites already outlawed, making it difficult to argue that conventional social media regulation would have altered the outcome.
It was actually Brianna’s friends on TikTok who rallied to hold vigils and mourn her publicly following her murder, serving as a genuine online support network.
Following the Downing Street meeting, the government briefed media that a social media crackdown would be announced “within weeks,” raising questions about the policy’s underlying motivations.
A cynic might suggest an embattled Prime Minister is rushing to deliver a legacy-defining change before potentially being swept from office as soon as this summer.
Evidence from Australia, where polling by the Molly Rose Foundation found 61 per cent of 12 to 15-year-olds are already evading that country’s social media ban, suggests blunt restrictions rarely achieve their intended goals.
Emotionally driven, sweeping policy solutions risk delivering serious unintended consequences, and if the Prime Minister wants a lasting legacy, an outright ban appears an uncertain foundation on which to build one.