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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I’m not aware of any country in the world that doesn’t do that ?
Australia has cumpolsory education for children, doesn’t allow smoking, doesn’t allow alcohol consumption, doesn’t allow children to drive, doesnt allow them to participate in porn, doesn’t allow them to have sex, enforces vaccination and a litany of other directives that over ride parental choice.
Many of the above are considerd harmful for children, like a swathe of experts say about chikdrens exposure to social media.
Some places in the US you are arrested for child endangerment for allowing your child to walk to school and the US continues to condone regularly shooting their children in the 1000s…
What I, some random on Lemmy thinks should be irrelevant, this should not be a “do your own research and go with your gut” sort of nonsense, thats what gives us RFK Jr.
What a majority of clinical experts do think is important. I was just pointing out the blantant flaw in your argument.