As of Wednesday, all youth under 16 in Australia will be banned from major social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Reddit, Twitch, and X. For over a decade, whistleblowers, politicians, academics, and experts around the world have sounded the alarm about the online harms people of all ages are exposed to.
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The ban does nothing to prepare teens to respond to digital harms. It makes no investments in education, community training, or parental support. Youth will not be magically prepared to address problematic online behaviours or content when they turn 16.
The time and resources spent on the ban could be better spent on things like providing education and support for digital citizenship, media literacy, privacy rights or resource centres.
If social media is problematic for a 13, 14 or 15 year old, it’s still likely to be problematic for a 16, 25, or 80 year old. There is no body of research that establishes 16 as a “safe threshold” for social media use and the age for healthy use can vary across genders.
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Under the current model, companies will not be inclined to improve their reporting systems for harmful content. In fact, in response to the ban, YouTube is actually removing a feature that would allow teens to report content they find inappropriate.
Youth under 16 who find ways to use these platforms, despite the bans, will be unlikely to come forward and ask for help if things go wrong. After all, they weren’t supposed to be online in the first place.
The answer to mitigating online harms is not kicking teens offline.
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Social media companies also need to be accountable to the ways the platforms are designed and run. These platforms are designed in ways that push certain content and elicit particular engagements.
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In China’s system, when a parent buys a phone, they can lock it into child settings at the device level, which not only forces all apps to operate in child mode but also does stuff like turn off internet from 10pm to 6am, caps screen time depending on the child’s age, and imposes break reminders after every 30 minutes of continuous use.
All the social media platforms are legally required to adjust algorithms and content for phones in child mode to only show age-appropriate content and to increase educational content, also to prevent dms with strangers, tipping, in-game purchases, and things like live broadcasting yourself.
All the online gaming platforms also require proof of age to use them or face restrictions.
So, there are much more sophisticated ways of making things work.
In “China’s system,” there is no privacy at all. We don’t need anything of this 24/7 surveillance nor the accompanying censorship.
This is not a sophisticated system what they have in China, this is an Orwellian dystopia.
Okay, Scotty Sockpuppet.