Condescending and Harmful: Australia’s Social Media Ban

With much in the way of pomp and false premises, the social media ban in Australia for those under 16-years-old was celebrated as a healthy incentive to encourage children to get off the screens and into the playgrounds.  A stampede of reinvigorated youth would rush to libraries to borrow books.  Sport would be taken up with vim and vigour.  Conversations in person would, miraculously, take place with renewed vigour.  Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had treacly visions of young Australians growing up playing in the outdoors with their friends, pursuing the game of “footy” and swimming and other sports, “discovering music and art, being confident and happy in the classroom and at home.”

Coming into effect from December 10 last year, digital platforms would, as announced by the eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, “have to take reasonable steps to prevent Australians under the age of 16 from creating or keeping an account.”  This was not so much a “ban” as “a delay to having accounts.”  An assessment by the Office of Impact Analysis cited the concerns of Queensland’s Chief Health Officer in stating that “existing studies provide compelling indications of possible negative links between unrestrained social media usage and the cognitive, emotional, and social wellbeing of young people.”  However, the Queensland report also noted the benefits of social media, “including offering a sense of belonging and reducing isolation” and admitted that its findings “have not yet reached a consensus fully supported by peer-reviewed research.”

The ban was implemented despite a growing number of studies faulting the premise that social media is demonically harmful for the young.  (These have been purposely or carelessly ignored by the office of the eSafety Commissioner and its various acolytes.)  A 2023 study by Andrew Przybylski from the Oxford Internet Institute and his colleague Matti Vuorre examining well-being data of 946,798 people across 72 countries between 2008 and 2019 found that, “Although reports of negative psychological outcomes associated with social media are common in academic and popular writing, evidence for harms is, on balance, more speculative than conclusive.”

Work by the respected Pew Research Center on children and their interaction with the internet found much satisfactionwith social media in terms of making them feel more connected with friends and their social lives, providing a community of support and providing a place for creative expression.

More recent studies further bolster the argument against such ham-fisted regulations.  Research published this year in the Journal of JAMA Pediatrics shed a more nuanced light on the field, with a cohort study of 100,991 Australian adolescents (grades 4-12) over 3 years revealing a U-shaped association in terms of detrimental or positive influences of social media use.  In other words, it is not linear, with moderate social media use being “associated with the best well-being outcomes.”  Not using social media, especially for boys, and using such platforms excessively, resulted in poorer well-being, though the authors express caution that “these findings are observational and should be interpreted cautiously.”

In December last year the Journal of Public Health also published an interesting study by researchers at the University of Manchester on 25,000 11- to 14-year-olds over three school years.  “Our findings,” the authors note, “challenge the widespread assumption that time spent on these [social media and gaming] technologies is inherently harmful and highlight the need for more nuanced perspectives that consider the context and individual differences in their use.”

Critics such as Cyber Safety Solutions founder Susan McLean have also pointed to the sheer futility of such bans.  “For every single bad thing that has been caused by a banned social media platform, I can provide you with a platform that is not going to be banned where the same thing has happened.”  Children would also be more than adept at circumventingthe measure.  The publication Techdirt, which has abominated the Australian measure from the outset, saw the legislation as “based on a moral panic and a wide variety of faulty assumptions, including that social media websites are inherently bad for kids, something none of the evidence supports.”  Even if harmful, children and adults could be instructed on how best to use these platforms, mindful of age, “meaning understanding the difference between risks and harms – not banning it altogether.”

This month, Guardian Australia ran a bruising piece documenting the ban’s isolating effects on various members of the disabled community.  An autistic 14-year-old by the name of Indy told the paper that “social media was my main way of socialising and without it I feel like I’ve lost my friends.”  Ezra Sholl, a 15-year-old Victorian teenager and disability advocate, also expressed the view that, “As a teenager with a severe disability, social media gives me an avenue to connect with my friends and have access to communities with similar interests.”

As if things could get any uglier for the zealots, the Australian outlet Crikey spotted that the marketing campaign behind the social media ban dubbed 36 months was run by an advertisement company by the name of FINCH, the same company retained by the online betting firm TAB to fund its Get Your Bet On campaign.  The 36 months campaign was advertised as a sincere, grassroots effort to improve the mental health of youth.  “Because healthy teens don’t raise themselves,” it condescendingly declared.  “They’re raised by adults brave enough to build better systems.”  The effort turned out to be funded to the hilt by FINCH, which also provided staff to the campaign, a fact confirmed by the campaign’s managing director Greg Attwells.

While the Albanese government clambered to the summit of moral high ground in fighting Big Tech and its attempt to corrupt young minds with fiendish social media, it has dragged its feet in addressing advertising in gambling, despite the recommendations of the bipartisan Parliamentary Inquiry into online gambling and its impacts on those experiencing gambling harm.  Clearly, one lot of harmful effects is worth more attention than the other.

The ban is facing a challenge in the Australian High Court.  Two 15-year-olds, Noah Jones and Macy Neyland, aided by the Digital Freedom Project, are arguing that the policy is disproportionate and an unwarranted impediment on the implied constitutional right to political communication.  Given the weight of evidence bountifully stacked and growing against the merits of these foolish, self-defeating restrictions, Parliament should spare the plaintiffs the trouble and repudiate the ban.

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