Freedom of speech cannot survive a social media ban

 

By Atty. Anna Mae Lamentillo

Published Sep 2, 2026 12:05 am

NIGHT OWL

Every generation has had a public square. For some, it was the town hall, the newspaper page or the university campus. For today’s young people, it is increasingly the social media feed: a place where friendships are maintained, identities are explored, ideas are tested and communities are built. Governments that treat these platforms as disposable entertainment misunderstand both the technology and the generation using it.

The instinct to protect children is legitimate. The proposed cure, however, is often worse than the disease. Blanket bans, age-based shutdowns and sweeping restrictions may sound decisive, but they do not eliminate demand. They merely push it out of sight. Young people who are locked out of mainstream platforms will not suddenly lose interest in communicating online. Many will migrate to hidden accounts, encrypted groups, offshore services or less regulated corners of the internet, where parents, teachers and authorities have even less visibility.

Prohibition has rarely made difficult behavior disappear. It changes where that behavior happens and who controls it. A ban can therefore create the illusion of safety while making real risks harder to detect. Children who fear punishment for being online may also be less likely to tell an adult when they encounter harassment, manipulation or disturbing material. The policy designed to protect them can end up isolating them.

There is also a wider principle at stake: freedom of speech. Social media is not merely a commercial product like a soft drink or a video game. It is now part of the infrastructure of modern expression. Political movements organize there. Students learn there. Artists find audiences there. Families separated by borders stay connected there. Young people often encounter public debate for the first time there. Restricting access to these spaces restricts participation in civic and cultural life.

Sweeping controls also create a dangerous precedent. Once governments claim the power to decide which citizens may enter a forum for communication, that power can expand. Today the justification may be child safety; tomorrow it may be misinformation, public order or political convenience. Rights are rarely lost in one moment. More often, they are narrowed through policies presented as temporary, technical or protective.

That does not mean the online world is harmless. It means governments must respond intelligently rather than theatrically. The better answer is education, transparency and empowerment. Schools should teach digital literacy as seriously as reading and mathematics. Parents should be given practical tools to guide younger users without turning the home into a surveillance state. Platforms should explain how their algorithms work, offer meaningful controls and respond quickly to abuse. Police and courts should target criminal conduct, not ordinary expression.

Most importantly, young people should be included in the conversation. Policies made about them without them are likely to fail because they ignore how social media is actually used. A teenager may rely on an online community for friendship, creative collaboration, disability support, cultural identity or help during a crisis. Removing that connection in the name of protection can cause its own harm.

Freedom of speech is easiest to defend when the speech is comfortable and the medium is familiar. The real test comes when new forms of communication unsettle institutions. Governments should resist the temptation to answer that discomfort with control.

A free society does not protect children by teaching them that difficult spaces must be closed. It prepares them to enter those spaces with judgment, resilience and support. Social media will continue to evolve, and young people will evolve with it. The task of government is not to force that reality underground, but to make it safer without making it silent.

What freedom means to me

 

By Atty. Anna Mae Lamentillo

Published May 15, 2026 12:05 am | Updated May 14, 2026 05:42 pm

NIGHT OWL

A lot of people have asked me what I learned most during the time I decided to study in London. My answer has surprised some of them. It was not a new theory, a prestigious institution, or even the thrill of living in a global city. It was freedom.

Not the grand, abstract kind we often invoke in speeches and essays. I mean a quieter, more intimate freedom: the freedom to free yourself from the baggage of societal expectation. The freedom to stop performing a version of yourself that others find acceptable. The freedom to pursue your work, your research, and your questions on your own terms, by your own methodology, with the dignity to reason, to disagree, and to be taken seriously.

As a woman who has led a career, I have long understood that success is rarely just about competence. It is also about navigation.

You learn how to read a room before you enter it. You learn when to speak with conviction and when to soften your voice so your certainty does not threaten anyone. You learn that ambition in a woman is often admired only when it is dressed as sacrifice, humility, or service. Even when you are accomplished, there is a subtle but constant pressure to remain palatable.

That is why freedom felt so profound to me in London. It was different to see it, to feel it, to inhabit it. For perhaps the first time in a long time, I felt released from the burden of explanation. I was not being measured against a script of what a woman at my stage in life ought to want, ought to prioritize, ought to become. I was simply allowed to think.

That may sound ordinary, but it is not. For many women, the right to think freely is still negotiated, not granted. We are encouraged to achieve, certainly, but often within approved boundaries. Be accomplished, but not intimidating. Be opinionated, but not difficult. Be independent, but not so independent that you become unreadable to the world around you. Freedom, then, is not merely the ability to move. It is the ability to exist without being constantly interpreted.

In London, I experienced the joy of intellectual space. I could pursue my research not as a performance, but as a practice. I could follow a question where it led, rather than where convention suggested it should go. I could test my own methodology, refine my own arguments, and enter into discourse with the confidence that rigorous reasoning was enough. That dignity matters. To be able to reason without apology is one of the purest forms of freedom I have known.

What I discovered is that freedom is not irresponsibility, nor is it rebellion for its own sake. It is clarity. It is the moment you realize that a life can be authored, not inherited. It is choosing what to carry and what to set down. It is understanding that expectations, however deeply rooted, are not destiny.

As women, many of us spend years becoming legible to others: reliable, respectable, admirable. Freedom begins when we become legible to ourselves. When we can say, without guilt, this is what I think, this is what I value, this is the work I want to do, and this is the life I want to build.

That is what London gave me. Not a new identity, but permission to return to my own mind. And once you have felt that kind of freedom, it becomes impossible to settle for anything less.