Berners-Lee compared access to social media with a driver's license and alcohol

Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist and one of the creators of the Internet, said on March 31 that the issue of age restrictions for access to social networks should be decided by each country independently, by analogy with the rules for issuing driver's licenses or selling alcohol.

"This is a very important question that all parents ask. I think this is, in fact, a cultural issue, and each community will have to decide for itself," the scientist said in an interview with the Corriere della Sera newspaper, answering a question about the age at which access to social networks can be provided.

Berners-Lee drew a parallel with the rules of driving and drinking alcohol, which vary significantly from country to country.

"As for social media, each country has to make its own decision about what is appropriate," he added.

According to the British physicist and computer scientist, there are social networks that are relatively harmless, and those that cause serious mental health problems. Their creators intentionally change the format to make the platforms more attractive and addictive. He cited Instagram (banned in Russia as extremist) and Pinterest as examples, which, in his opinion, is "funny but not addictive."

In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, who worked at the European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN, proposed a project for an information management system that used hypertext to link documents on different computers connected to the Internet (the World Wide Web). By the end of 1990, he and Belgian engineer Robert Cayo had developed key technologies: hypertext markup language (HTML), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and unified resource pointers (URLs). The history of the Internet as a public service began on August 6, 1991 with the publication of the world's first website info.cern.ch .

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The Times newspaper reported on February 16 that the UK authorities may impose a ban on the use of social networks for teenagers under the age of 16 as early as 2026. In addition, the Cabinet of Ministers intends to oblige Internet platforms to set limits on the time that minors spend in services with endless scrolling of content.

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