I was playing brain dead Game Boy games when I was a kid and adults around me were saying games need to be outlawed because they're making my generation stupid. Now I'm a game developer and pretty happy with it.

Every generation has grumpy old people complaining about the youth. I see the dumb TikTok videos that grumpy old people complain about today, and they're about 2 steps above the absolute slop Gen X adults used to watch in the early 2000s: reality TV. Now grumpy old people watch political streamers saying we need to ban (new thing) because it's making kids stupid.

They said same about video games but it turns out I didn't just want to play them, I also invested crazy amounts of time learning how to make them. Best time to spend crazy hours pursuing something you care about before the busy schedule of an adult saps all that away. It got me ahead. Not everyone just wants quick fixes.

The difference, I think (as an "over-user" of computers all throughout childhood) is that there were no basis for "they said same about video games", but there is a lot of basis for "social media is a net bad" now.

Do I believe the UK is doing this for the right reason or the right way? Absolutely not. But I also don't agree with the comparison of now and when I was a kid/teen.