I’ve come to the conclusion the only thing you can really do is leave when you disagree with the direction of your country, but of course not everyone has the ability to do that.
If enough people feel strongly about it to go onto the street and wave placards, that starts getting noticed and has to be acknowledged.
Of course, the UK (and others) have started making protests illegal, because they are doing things that we should feel strongly enough about to go and wave placards at them.
I've had plenty of conversations recently where people say "yeah, but social media is harming kids. Banning it is good". People broadly see the headline "think of the children" and think, "yup, let's protect children".
To me, there's all sorts of downsides - the death of small discussion forums, pushing interesting online experiences out of the reach of teenagers, the creeping surveillance and, worst of all, the complete end of the open internet (when inevitably it doesn't actually work). But most non-tech people just don't see that.
The currently in place age verificaton system is a joke. It's trivial to circumvent them - not just via VPN, but also because there's countless websites that just don't care. The social media ban will bring more of the same - and then they'll have to ban VPNs and bring in website firewalls.
Who wins? The established tech companies, who have big enough legal departments to comply with increasing red tape. How is a new social network going to legitimately compete with Facebook now?
But when I say all this to people I know, they just don't see it. Most people are not tech people.
And because I don't have kids, I'm presumed to not have any skin in the game - like the websites are not going to ask me my age or something.
That often is democracy: what's popular isn't always what's best.
Freedom and liberty should be the foundations of a healthy society. Democracy should be reserved only for those things that must be decided collectively and universally enforced.
What kids do on their phones doesn't even come close. Let parents and vendors decide what their kids and customers can do. I've met plenty of well-adjusted kids who aren't on social media because their parents don't let them.
When they do, they will change their mind (and probably protest loudly that they never wanted it in the first place).
See Brexit for a clear example.
I also think there's more of what I'd call "grassroots British libertarianism" than you'd expect. It's just in tension with Daily Mail-ism, often in the same people. They just don't want onerous rules applied to them.