There is no law stopping any of these under 16 kids from creating an algorithm free area such as a special interest forum or joining a forum to chat to each other. Forum being somewhere that has real level headed folks who undoubtedly would act as a voice of reason and not encourage silly BS if it were to surface.

As for the under 16 ban, it's more that social media platforms snubbed the regulators reacting to a consensus of concerns over bad algorithms, and slowly esafety via govt regulations found another way to skin the cat. Kids that are emotionally strong and robust will most likely skirt the ban, those who are susceptible that the platforms used to target purposely ... well those platforms no longer have any legal legs to stand on if things go wrong.