Its not an empty panic if you actually have real reasons why its harmful.

Every panic has ‘reasons’ why something is harmful. Whether they are valid reasons, proportional reasons, or reasons that matter, is up for interpretation.

First you’d need laws in place that determine how the social media algorithms should work, then we can talk.

Yes, then we can talk about banning systems that remain harmful despite corporate influence being removed. You’re still just arguing (by analogy) to ban kids from places where smoking adverts are until we fix the adverts.

companies ARE making it harmful, so it IS harmful

No, companies didn’t make social media harmful, they made specific aspects of social media harmful. You need to actually approach this with nuance and precision if you want to fix the root cause.

That, and there are various other reasons why its harmful

Every reason that’s been cited in studies for social media being harmful to kids (algorithmic steering towards harmful content, influencer impact on self-image in kids, etc) is a result of companies seeking profits by targeting kids. There are other harms as well, such as astroturfing campaigns, but those are non-unique to social media, and can’t be protected against by banning it.

Let me ask you upfront, do you believe that children ideally should not have access to the internet apart from school purposes (even if you would not mandate a ban)?