There are days when the news feels like a gentle breeze across the hills of Wales, and there are days when it arrives like a startled raven dropping a scroll at your feet. Today’s scroll contains the latest grand plan from the powers that be, a plan that declares that young people under sixteen must be banished from the digital commons entirely, while those aged sixteen and seventeen must be watched, measured, and gently herded like slightly suspicious sheep. It is a curious thing. A very curious thing indeed.

Because only a short while ago the same government was telling us that sixteen-year-olds are wise enough, mature enough, and responsible enough to help choose the next leaders of the nation. They are old enough to vote, old enough to shape the future, old enough to stand at the ballot box with the rest of us and make decisions that echo through the land. But apparently, they are not old enough to use Facebook.

Of course, this is not really about Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (I refuse to call it X), Or whatever new platform the young people have invented while the rest of us were still trying to remember our passwords. This is about identity.

Because to enforce this new rule, every person in the United Kingdom will need to hand over their personal information to prove who they are before they can step into the digital square. Every account. Every login. Every platform. The gates will not open unless you show your papers.

And once you have shown your papers, the gatekeepers will know exactly who you are, where you are, and what you say. The old dream of anonymity on the internet, that wild and unruly freedom of the early days, will be gone. The masks will be taken away. The names will be written down. The watchers will watch.

Some people are already whispering that this is less about safety and more about surveillance. That this is one more stone placed in the long road toward a world where every citizen is catalogued, monitored, and gently nudged into approved behaviour. A world where the digital realm is no longer a place of exploration but a place of observation.

And then there is the other piece of the puzzle. The forced digital ID. The one that has been creeping toward us like a polite but determined market researcher with a clipboard. Combine that with the new social media rules and you begin to see the shape forming in the mist. A shape that looks uncomfortably familiar.

Some say it resembles Big Brother from the pages of Nineteen Eighty Four. Others say it looks more like The Party from V for Vendetta, that cold and calculating machine that smiles while it tightens the net. I am not saying we are there. I am not saying the sky is falling. But I am saying that when you place these pieces together, when you look at the direction of travel, you cannot help but feel the faintest chill at the back of your neck, and the urge to purchase some Guy Fawkes masks.

I am not a number; I am a free man!