While regulation of young people’s use of social media is gaining momentum worldwide, Hong Kong lags behind
3-MIN READ3-MIN ListenAlice WuAlice Wu is a political consultant and a former associate director of the Asia Pacific Media Network at UCLA. Published: 9:30am, 31 Aug 2026Hong Kong, a city of overachievers, especially when it comes to the young, is also filled with children who take to social media early. Almost 35 per cent of kindergarten pupils log at least one hour of recreational screen time daily. By the junior forms, 60 per cent exceed the international two-hour daily limit.The time children spend on screens creates friction at home, accounting for 85.5 per cent of family disputes. Governments must look into whether they are adequately protecting children from screen time addiction – the bread and butter of social media platforms – or if parents are being left to their own devices.
I have my doubts that this is because Meta cares about our children.
While a ban by one country will hardly rein in social media’s damaging effect on young people, it is a way to hold social media platforms accountable for their reckless pursuit of profit at the expense of our children’s mental health.
