The word doing the work is "voluntary"

The story

Metro reports that technology secretary Liz Kendall has announced voluntary social media curfews for 16- and 17-year-olds, preventing access between midnight and 6am, with addictive features such as auto-scrolling and algorithmic feeds turned off during that window. Teens will be able to switch the controls off if they choose. A government pilot of more than 300 teens found the curfews improved sleep and concentration, and found that 90% would not switch them off. The Conservatives called it a "dog's dinner." NSPCC chief Chris Sherwood labelled the plans "a sticking plaster" that fails to address the addictive design features driving high screentime.

The reframe

The government's own pilot figure, that 90% of teens would not opt out, is being used as evidence the policy works. Read the other way, it says the same thing the NSPCC is pointing at: a meaningful minority would switch it off, and a curfew that can be switched off protects exactly the teenagers least likely to need protecting, while doing nothing for the ones the policy is nominally about. A genuinely at-risk teenager, in the grip of exactly the addictive design the NSPCC describes, is the person most likely to find the toggle and turn it back on. The 90% who leave it alone were probably closer to fine either way.

Chapter 14's discussion of symbolic solutions becoming attractive when practical ones are difficult applies directly here. Banning addictive design features outright, the auto-scroll, the algorithmic feed, is the practical solution, and it is notable that the announcement gestures at doing exactly that only inside the midnight-to-6am window, as though the addictive architecture becomes acceptable again at 6:01am. A curfew with an opt-out is not a weaker version of protecting children from addictive design. It is a different policy entirely, one that produces a statement of concern and a measurable pilot statistic without requiring anyone to confront the design incentives the NSPCC is naming. Minister Kanishka Narayan's own framing, that he wouldn't want to presume teenagers will all switch it off, inadvertently makes the point: the policy's success is being defined by how few people use the feature that makes it optional, which is a strange way to measure whether a protection is actually protecting anyone.