The well-known Bitcoin Core developer Peter Todd criticized initiatives to ban social networks for teenagers. According to him, it was at a young age, through social media, that he communicated with the pioneers of cryptography and worked on the ideas that became the foundation of bitcoin (BTC). He noted: the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada want to ban such communication.
The reason was a statement by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on June 15 about banning access to social networks for children under 16. The restrictions will affect TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, and X, and are due to take effect in the spring of 2027. Australia introduced a similar ban back in December 2025, and Canada is moving toward similar measures.
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Peter Todd's personal argument
Todd said that he started using social networks at the age of 12, communicating with technically savvy adults about programming and computers. At 15 he was already corresponding with cryptographers Adam Back and Hal Finney, trying to invent bitcoin.
The names Todd mentions are key to the history of the cryptocurrency. Adam Back created the Hashcash system, to which bitcoin's official whitepaper directly refers, and Hal Finney became the first recipient of a bitcoin transaction from Satoshi Nakamoto.
Todd's main idea is simple: banning social networks for teenagers would cut talented children off from the environment where breakthrough ideas are born. By this logic, under such rules his own path into cryptography might never have begun.
The debate over internet freedom and child protection
Todd's post became part of a broader discussion. Another user cited the example of Kane Parsons — a 20-year-old director who started a YouTube channel at nine and over years of practice grew into the author of a feature film. In the user's opinion, under a ban teenagers would lose almost a decade of creative practice.
Source: BeInCrypto
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