Rabbi Charley Baginsky, Co-Lead of The Movement for Progressive Judaism, delivered BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day on Tuesday 9 June 2026. You can listen here or read it below:
Reports of girls as young as eight worrying about wrinkles have sparked calls to ban skincare products aimed at children. And concerns about social media have fuelled demands for a ban for under-16s.
Yesterday, on this programme, the Children’s Commissioner Rachel de Souza argued that if children are being harmed online, we should focus less on banning them and more on holding companies to account.
As the parent of three teenagers, one of whom would be affected by such a ban I agree with her. Children are growing up under pressures previous generations could scarcely have imagined. Their friendships, arguments, aspirations and anxieties travel with them everywhere.
I find myself uncomfortable, not with the diagnosis.
But with the prescription.
A ban is easy to announce. It’s simple. Clear. Decisive. But it risks being a short cut. One that allows us to avoid harder questions. Why have children become vulnerable to these pressures in the first place? And why do we find it difficult to challenge the industries that profit from them?
In the Garden of Eden, after Adam and Eve eat from the Tree of Knowledge, God asks a single question:
Ayekah?
Where are you?
The rabbis understood that God was not looking for Adam. God knew exactly where he was.
The question was what responsibility Adam would take for the situation he had helped create.
I find myself hearing that question in these stories.
Not directed at children, but at adults.
My teenagers love social media. They use it to create, to laugh and to stay connected with friends. They have found communities there, explored interests and encountered perspectives I could never have offered them. They are often far wiser online than adults give them credit for.
Social media can be harmful. But I am wary of a conversation that treats young people as consumers to be protected rather than citizens to be educated and empowered.
If an eight-year-old is worried about wrinkles, the problem runs deeper than a skincare routine.
If a teenager is struggling online, it runs deeper than a smartphone.
Children did not create algorithms designed to hold attention.
They did not build platforms that profit from insecurity.
Yet too often they find themselves treated as the problem to be solved.
After Cain kills Abel, he asks God: “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
Jewish tradition has always understood the answer to be yes.
We are responsible for one another.
That responsibility extends to the systems we build and what we allow them to become. Before we reach for a ban, perhaps we need to sit a little longer with the question.
Ayekah?
Where are we?
What responsibility do we take for the world the next generation is growing up in?