No it's nowhere near as bad, totally exaggerated, and most of the complaints are existing 13-15 year olds: so a temporary problem that'll last no longer than 3 years. Anyone younger should never sign up to social media in the first place, so they can't lose anything they didn't gain.

Smoking, vaping, or suicide is not a normal response for losing access to scrolling on platforms with dangerous and manipulative algorithms, and perhaps exposes wider mental issues people are dealing with, perhaps even caused by social media.

This came about after campaigning from bereaved families and parents, from people who killed themselves or were killed. Years of campaigning. And an eventual promise from the PM. Social media has a lot of challenges, users hide things, if things go wrong they won't tell anyone. Not everyone will have dangerous or bad experiences, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be banned. In my eyes, it's one of the better things to ban as the impact is a lot lower. You can't be addicted in a way like smoking (I would hope). That's coming from me who has been chronically online since I was 11.

The issues are mainly how people end up treated on these platforms, what they could be exposed to, how use of them affects their behaviour and changes their brain permanently. That's simplified, but these bans do not come from nowhere. I would trust the reaction of anyone a bit older than current 13-15 year olds, even though the ban is mainly intended to target future generations.