Conceptualizing age-appropriate social media to support children's digital futures

Is there really a 'right age' for social media? As governments rush to regulate children's digital lives, age-based bans and 'age-appropriate' design regulations are gaining international momentum. However, these are often based on theoretically dated 'ages and stages' models and blunt age thresholds. This article examines three seemingly divergent yet surprisingly convergent approaches. First, emerging regulatory frameworks are embedding 'age-appropriate' design and bright-line age limits. Second, social science research on children's digital experience, offers valuable documentation of developmental variability across ages but provides limited policy-ready guidance and often lacks developmental theory. Third, a normative child rights framework grounded in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child's principle of 'evolving capacities' urges a balance between protection and participation rights in ways that take into account children's variable capacities and increasing autonomy. Given the often fraught and contested nature of the debates over digital policy, we call on developmental psychologists to scrutinize proposed age thresholds, map developmental evidence to diverse contexts, and bring contemporary theory and robust evidence to inform policy. Without this input, decisions that matter to children's digital lives will be left to political expediency and corporate interests, overlooking or even undermining children's rights and developmental needs.