It’s been six months since the ban on social media took effect in Australia for children under the age of 16. Since then, a growing number of countries have been taking steps to follow suit. Experts point to the ban’s positive effects, but what do the teenagers think?
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TRANSCRIPT:
In a world first decision, Australia’s ban on social media for under 16s was put in place in Australia in December last year.
It covers multiple social media platforms including Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Threads, Tik Tok, X and YouTube with companies facing fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars if they fail to prevent underage access.
Ela Menon, a 16-year-old social media user from Sydney says the ban targets the wrong end of the system:
“I don’t know, they should crack down on the companies not the actual young people. They should make the companies do better and get fines if they don’t.”
Another 16 year-old, Ilias Patrikios, agrees.
“Stop bad stuff from going on social media and then they (children) won’t experience it. Like, why is it there in the first place?”
Tatijana Dagarin has doubts about the blanket ban.
“I think parents have a really big responsibility to make sure they know what their kids are seeing online and make sure, like, their kids are not on social media too young. Or they could set up parental restrictions or something and apps have a big responsibility that some of them, especially Instagram, aren’t doing (enough) to monitor what is shown on the platforms. Like, there’s so many videos of people just, like, dying and no one does anything about it. I think something that did have a big impact on what kids are seeing and how much time they were spending on social media was definitely the ban in schools. So, I think more things like that are actually more tangible are much more helpful.”
But for some experts, despite the now well documented difficulties in preventing children from opening accounts on the banned platforms, the positives are starting to show.
Timothy Koskie is from the University of Sydney School of Media and Communication:
“This is the beginning of something. What we talk about in sociology is something called ‘network effects’. Basically, the more people that are on it, the more people are on it, the more people that aren’t on it, the more people aren’t on it. So, we can hopefully start to see the opposite starting to happen, where increasing numbers of kids, increasing groups of kids are not in that space.”
Kathryn Modecki of the University of Western Australia, School of Psychological Science has been monitoring the impact of the ban and its effectiveness.
“It’s a swamp. I think we can all agree it’s a swamp, right? And, so, these are companies who have served up a swamp. It doesn’t have to be this way and so how can we keep young people safe is what would be great to see these for-profit companies cleaning it up.”
In her work for the university and the Kids Research Institute Australia, Ms Modecki and her team have been studying the impact of social media on teenagers for 14 years.
They’ve analysed data streams from thousands of teenagers’ smartphones they had direct access to and have been in direct contact with parents for nine years.
“One thing I talk a lot about is communication because it’s extremely difficult to know what a young person is engaging in online. We want them to feel safe speaking to a trusted adult in some capacity. If they are encountering problematic material, you know, that’s another concern associated with the ban, right? That that might be less likely. But keeping those lines of communication open is, is really critical.”
Dozens of countries including France, Denmark and the United Kingdom are actively discussing the possibility of following in Australia’s footsteps.
Modecki points out that Australia’s experiment does not yet have full conclusions.
Ms Modecki says it’s still early days:
“There’s such an eagerness to hop on board now when actually there’s no results yet right? I mean, we have anecdotal evidence from kids saying one thing. We have anecdotal suggestions from the government saying another and I don’t want to discount either of those but that’s not how we evaluate policy, right? And I just want to reiterate that no one’s saying don’t do anything. I don’t think anyone is saying that and no one is saying this isn’t a concern. And somehow I feel like that has been lost in the zeitgeist. I hear from a lot of parents, ‘well, they need to do something and something’s better than nothing, right?’ And I can appreciate that. That’s probably the most common thing I hear.”
Parent Kait Gotham’s advice for other countries is that a ban won’t necessarily get children off social media but what it will do is create dialogue in your country.
She says it may give parents something to think about or something to point to.
“I’m still of the opinion that parents have to parent and that the government can’t do that for you.”
