Erase social media tomorrow? Brits say yes
A recent Opinium Research poll indicates that only 7% of British adults view social media as a force for good, with one-third supporting its immediate removal from the internet. Despite widespread criticism regarding addiction, misinformation, and divisive algorithms, social media usage in the UK has significantly increased since 2010. The study also reveals strong public support for regulating platforms that expose minors to harmful content, coinciding with upcoming legislative measures and cultural discussions about the industry's impact.
- ▪Opinium Research surveyed 2,000 adults and 1,100 parents in May, finding that 42 percent of respondents consider social media addictive.
- ▪Approximately 55.5 million people in the UK are currently signed up to social media platforms, a substantial increase from 29.4 million in 2010.
- ▪Seven in ten surveyed individuals support imposing fines on social media companies that allow under-16s to access harmful content.
- ▪Half of the participants believe social media is worse for society now than in 2010 due to the prevalence of false information and algorithmic bias.
- ▪The UK government is preparing a social media ban for under-16s and has announced a new center to combat misinformation.
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| Original publisher | The Register |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/2026/10/01/erase-social-media-tomorrow-brits-say-yes/5300109 |
| Publication time | Thu, 01 Oct 2026 10:29:00 +0200 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-10-01T08:32:32.811Z |
| Last seen | 2026-10-01T08:32:32.811Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | 9xgpwUpQ4UdM · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
(function() { let windowUrl = window.location.href; windowUrl = windowUrl.substring(windowUrl.indexOf('?') + 1); let messageElement = document.querySelector('.shareableMessage'); if (windowUrl && windowUrl.includes('code') && windowUrl.includes('expires')) { messageElement.style.display = 'block'; } })(); offbeat Erase social media tomorrow? Brits say yes So why are more and more people snorting their daily fix of cat videos, men fighting and political propaganda Paul Kunert Paul Kunert EMEA EDITOR Published thu 1 Oct 2026 // 09:29 UTC READ MORE Leaked IPO docs: Anthropic tempts investors with existential risk warning 1 day ago Anthropic and OpenAI look to Uncle Sam to make them too big to fail 15 days ago Britain's technology brief is now everyone's job and nobody's responsibility 19…
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