I’ll take a day at random. Last Saturday, my YouTube watch list was gloriously varied. The chuck in my electric screwdriver had jammed, so 10 minutes with a man from Ohio sorted that out. Another item on my chore list was crossed off thanks to a short video explaining how to hang a floating shelf. The afternoon featured a documentary about great white sharks for my son, highlights of a famous Chelsea match from the 1990s for me, and a permaculture evangelist explaining why tomatoes like being planted horizontally for the wife. That evening, I found “The Gathering Storm,” one of the better films about Winston Churchill.

The point being that YouTube is the biggest repository of practical knowledge, niche obsession, and harmless diversion humanity has yet assembled. Which is why it is depressing that it may soon become collateral damage in Southeast Asian bans on social media for children.

Indonesia will begin requiring “high-risk” platforms to block under-16s from March 28, and YouTube appears to be in scope. Malaysia has said it plans a similar under-16 ban in 2026. In the Philippines, a House bill introduced this month would likewise bar under-16s from accessing social media. Australia’s under-16 regime is already in force and explicitly covers YouTube.

I am generally in favor of such measures. If your picture of social media is the marketplace of free ideas, then all this can sound terribly censorious. But if that’s still your picture of social media, after all these years, you’ve spent too much time in the bazaars of neurosis and vanity.

Yes, many Southeast Asian youths access their news on social media, but there is no iron law requiring journalism to be consumed alongside scam ads and gym selfies. Better news can be found elsewhere. Granted, it’s where many socialize with their friends, but it’s cynical to imagine that the kiddies won’t be able to adapt. Moreover, there are plenty of things that are illegal or unwise for under-16s but not for adults.

We have not evolved to be continually exposed to the edited highlights of everyone else’s life, twenty-four hours a day. Up until the early 2010s, how many people could any one person realistically compare themselves to? A few school friends, colleagues, cousins, neighbors, perhaps the occasional local oddball uncle with some fruity ideas. Chances are that your family and friends inhabited roughly the same moral universe (for good or ill).

Of course, we should be wary of the utopianism and the cynicism surrounding the bans. In much the same way that the platform creators were hopelessly idealistic in thinking their inventions would usher in a new era of communalism and liberated speech, there is now a sort of utopianism in imagining that the maladies of youth can be cured simply by closing the apps.

And cynical because Malaysia and Indonesia, and others, are not considering the best possible good alongside the most imaginable bad. At its best, YouTube is a public utility carrying more (free) practical information and wisdom than any single library or university could hope to contain. At its best, Facebook is the parish noticeboard where you can see photos of your aunt’s new cat.

Indonesia and Malaysia would be wise to rethink lumping YouTube together with platforms whose basic business model is social comparison and tribalism. Yes, YouTube can be addictive, but so can many useful things, from books and food to stimulants. Yes, the kiddies can find pornography on there, although nothing like what they will see from the average pop-up. And YouTube isn’t really a place for cyberbullying and romance scams in the way many other platforms are.

YouTube is the closest our societies have come to the Library of Babel, except with better plumbing advice. Indeed, where else can you watch a six-hour documentary on the Tet Offensive and a thirty-second clip from a plumber explaining the best way to unclog a U-bend? (That was one of my Sundays a few weeks ago.) Where else can a child learn long division, a parent learn to fit a booster seat, an insomniac fall into archival footage of 1960s Phnom Penh?