With Australia’s world-leading social media ban for under-16s to come into effect on Wednesday, can you expect to see your suburb’s streets and parks overflowing with happy, healthy device-less children these school holidays?
Don’t hold your breath.
Children are already boasting about getting around the restrictions, whether it be by tricking age verification software or simply by migrating to new, unregulated apps.
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Some children will find ways to skirt the ban, just as some children have always flouted age restrictions designed to help keep them safe from alcohol, tobacco and other risks.
This legislation isn’t a silver bullet. It won’t send us back to an idealised version of the pre-smartphone past.
That doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing.
According to data published by the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne in 2023, 16 per cent of Australian children aged eight to 13 reported having symptoms of anxiety, while one in four had symptoms of depression.
The reasons are complex and multifaceted, but there is strong evidence that much of the blame rests with the devices delivering a constant barrage of questionable content directly into their developing minds.
Adolescent girls are at greatest risk, with cyberbullying and disordered eating particular concerns.
Our kids are in the grips of a mental health crisis and it’s our job as adults to protect them from it as best we can.
While young people’s highly mouldable plasticine brains make them particularly vulnerable to the downsides of social media, adults aren’t immune from the dangers.
And this is only a delay — those hazards still lurk, waiting for children to reach 16 to pull them back in under its toxic influence.
This ban won’t address the root problems of social media — the widespread misinformation and disinformation, the bigotry and hatred, the online predators, the addictive nature of the endless scroll which can see us reaching for our phones at the expense of our health, relationships and sleep.
Want to be horrified? Check your own screen time through your device’s settings. Chances are it is far higher than you would be comfortable with.
This ban is a starting point only. It buys us valuable time by shielding young children from the worst of social media’s harms.
We need to use that time wisely.
Governments need to do more to hold content creators and the platforms which host them accountable for the deliberate spread of misinformation and harmful content.
Schools and parents need to do more to help children become social media literate.
None of this will be easy. Rapidly improving AI technology can make it difficult for even the most tech savvy among us to discern between what’s real and what’s not online.
Many children will feel isolated and upset by this change. Understandably, they feel they are being unfairly punished for something that’s the fault of adults.
Ideally, we would remove the dangers from social media, not the children. But for now, we must use the tools we have to hand, because there is no second chance at childhood.
