Ben Harris-Roxas

Australia’s social media ban for under-16s is a classic example of narrative driving policy rather than evidence. Facing a complex problem, the Albanese government has leapt to a simple solution that feels decisive rather than grappling with messy trade-offs. The teen social media ban is exactly this kind of policy on the hoof.

The advocacy group 36 Months has been focal to pushing this ban, backed by high-profile endorsements from the Prime Minister. Yet as Crikey recently revealed, while 36 Months accused critics of being in big tech’s pocket, they were quietly lining up corporate sponsorships, eyeing global expansion, and developing their own AI tools to sell. This advocacy has manufactured urgency around a policy that mischaracterises what’s at stake.

Social media platforms have genuine problems like algorithmic amplification of harmful content, privacy violations and surveillance, addictive design features, and the brainrot inherent letting algorithms determine what you see. These issues arguably accrue more harmfully amongst those older than 16, but that’s a digression.

The potential harms of social media don’t exist in isolation from benefits however, particularly for young people navigating identity formation and seeking community beyond their immediate geography. I think back to Twitter in the early 2010s. It connected me with people I’d never have encountered otherwise during a fairly isolated time in my life, and helped me find my tribe. Twitter wasn’t perfect, and it’s certainly terrible now, but there were meaningful benefits for me.

For LGBTQIA+ young people, neurodivergent people, or teenagers passionate about niche interests, these platforms offer lifelines to communities where they feel they belong. And that’s been cut off precipitously, with no thought, and no voice afforded to those groups.

People with disabilities who are over 16 are also finding themselves affected. They’re funnelled through inaccessible verification system, like facial recognition a proof of age tools that don’t work and aren’t accessible. For these people social media isn’t entertainment, it’s their primary access to information, community, and participation in public life. This law locks them out too.

We’ve now legislated to deny future generations these pathways to connection and identity formation. The ban assumes that removing access equals protection, but it ignores how young people actually develop resilience, critical media literacy, and the communication and citizenship skills they’ll need as adults (and that many people aged over 16 lack).

For policy to be workable, let alone good, requires weighing harms and benefits, considering unintended consequences, and learning from implementation challenges elsewhere. Something like an equity lens, a human rights impact assessment or health impact assessment would have identified all these issues in advance.

Instead we have politics masquerading as protection, wrapped in a rhetoric of parental anxiety and delivered with irresponsible speed. Our teenagers, and the communities they’re finding, deserve better than harmful theatre.

This post first appeared on the Harris-Roxas Health blog.

Image: “Group selfie” Creator: Pabak Sarkar Year: 2014 Format: Digital still photograph Rights: CC BY 2.0 Source: Flickr