A year ago, climate activist Anjali Sharma, a university student on a mission to strengthen climate action, found herself walking among politicians’ offices in Parliament House.
Tracing the path that led her to these halls, it all started with an Instagram account she started when she was 13 years old.
Disillusioned with the news and curious about climate change, Anjali started an infographic aimed at educating similar young people who were cut off from mainstream media and feeling hopeless about their future. I started creating graphics.
Her following quickly grew and she found herself posting to her 12,000 followers in between her high school classes. At the time, she says, each of her followers had an “adrenaline rush.”
“My attitude to news when I was younger felt very distant and otherworldly,” she says. “Social media, on the other hand, was my community.”
Anjali Sharma and independent senator David Pocock at a press conference in Parliament House last year. (AAP: Mick Tsikas)
This week, the government, with the support of a coalition, passed a law making it illegal for 13-year-olds like Anjali to open an Instagram page, TikTok account, or access countless other social media platforms. . It serves as a stepping stone for many people to experience the world.
There are no exemptions for children who had accounts before the rule changes went into effect or whose parents have allowed them to use the platform.
Australia is currently in uncharted territory. No other country has successfully implemented a policy completely banning access to social media for children and adolescents under the age of 16, and some international media outlets have described the law as a “test case” for the rest of the world. That’s what he says.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told Insider on Sunday: “I’ve met parents who have had to bury their children as a result of the influence of social media and bullying. We need to do something about it. “There is,” he said. .
“This is a world-leading bill, and I can assure you that the whole world is paying attention.”
Now that all eyes are on Australia, the big question is whether the government of the day will be able to pull it off before the law comes into force in a year’s time, and perhaps more importantly, whether it will be a child’s The question is whether or not it can be made easier. It will make things worse.
Would a ban help or hinder?
Disentangling the influence of something as pervasive as social media on something as intangible, subjective, and ever-changing as mental health has never been easy.
It’s no secret that social media can be a tricky place. Where schoolyard bullying can spill over into cell phones and teenagers’ waking moments, dangerous ideas about body image can be fostered and predators with more sinister intentions may be lurking. there is.
These are the things that keep parents up at night, and the things that the major political parties seize upon to justify their policies. Opposition spokesman David Coleman, a father of two, became emotional earlier this week, describing the issue as “one of the defining issues of our time”.
“All parents worry about this. We worry about what our kids are watching. We worry about what our kids are exposed to on platforms like Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram. “And it’s natural for us to be concerned about our children,” he says.
Coleman, who supported the coalition’s call for an age limit in June, told the House that the data was clear. The mental health of Australian children, especially girls, has “deteriorated significantly over the past decade”.
“Some say the exact correlation between the rise of social media and the growing mental health crisis of Australians is just a coincidence. That argument should be treated with the absolute disdain it deserves.”
But what about the teens who take pleasure in sending memes to their friends, build communities online, and spend their lives communicating through screens and not knowing it’s any different?
The Prime Minister has repeatedly drawn comparisons to the widely accepted minimum drinking age. Minors may want to drink, but that doesn’t mean they should.
Meanwhile, some experts are attempting to quantify the impact social media has on young people. British longitudinal study of 17,400 young people Communications Minister Michel Rolland mentioned it during Question Time last month.
An Oxford University study published in 2022 found that girls experienced a negative association between social media use and life satisfaction between the ages of 11 and 13, and boys between the ages of 14 and 15. .
Professor Andrew Przybylski, a co-author of the report, said more data was needed on young people’s use of social media: “What matters is not whether social media is good or bad, but what young people are doing.” said.
Susan Sawyer from the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute says there are limits to what the currently available data can tell us.
“Honestly, I don’t think this study is helpful,” she said during a hastily held half-day Senate hearing this week when asked whether the benefits of social media outweigh the drawbacks.
Professor Sawyer said: “There’s really no clear evidence one way or the other.”
She stressed that while there was a “potential” for harm, “the way young people find meaning in the world and connect with society is increasingly online.”
“I think if we had another time, if we had social expectations, we could have introduced some bans earlier if we wanted to,” she says. “It’s very difficult to take these rights and expectations away from young people today.”
For this reason, she, along with representatives from Headspace and anti-bullying organization Project Rockit, emphasized the need for a balanced approach.
Psychologist Daniel Einstein, who supports pushing for a higher minimum age, took a stronger position. “I don’t believe social media has any mental health benefits. I’ve looked at the evidence thoroughly,” she says.
“Even if there were, I think the disadvantages would be far greater.”
what young people are thinking
Anjali is under no illusions that social media is completely safe for young people and others. Running a page dedicated to climate change meant she experienced some of its well-documented harms earlier than others.
But she worries about teens like her who won’t have the chance to find mates online and that their thirst for connection will push them further into less secure underground spaces. There is.
She is also concerned about how the ban will affect young people’s political participation. She became involved in organizing school strikes for climate change when she started an Instagram page. The mega-event drew an estimated 300,000 Australians to the streets five years ago and made headlines around the world.
She believes none of that would have been possible without social media.
“That’s how we reached out to our contemporaries and let them know what we stand for and that there’s an opportunity for people who care and think like them to get involved. ” she says.
“There are big barriers for young people to get involved because there is this idea that young people are not smart enough or knowledgeable enough. But social media is a great way to meet people who are out there. It was a thing.”
The government, with support from the coalition, passed a law making it illegal for children and adolescents under 16 to use social media. (ABC News: Luke Stevenson)
Five years later, kids are still getting political attention on social media. Part of the conversation is, ironically, about whether they should be allowed to remain on the very platform they are having the discussion on.
The comments section of TikTok (one of the banned platforms, especially popular with young people) is filled with hundreds of teens lamenting what’s going to happen, or at least that’s how it seems. It is.
Some people mistakenly worry that they will be jailed for breaking the rules. Under the law, technology companies are responsible for taking “reasonable steps” to prevent under-16s from accessing their platforms, not users themselves.
Some say their lives will be destroyed. “It’s like a dystopia, duh,” “We live in a dictatorship,” and “This is a big joke” are some examples of videos that have received around 9,000 likes.
Some platforms that technically fall under the new definition of age-restricted social media platforms will be exempted from the ban, including messaging apps, gaming sites, and platforms with a primary focus on health or education. Youth-oriented platforms like YouTube Kids and platforms that don’t require users to log in are also being pioneered.
“We’re not banning the internet, but for the vast majority of young people who know how to interact with online spaces, this is the same as banning the internet,” Lucy of Project Rockit said.・Thomas spoke at a Senate hearing.
Headspace’s Nicole Palfrey pointed to conversations with young people who declared they intended to circumvent the ban. “Our concern is that they will be forced into an unregulated space that will cost us a lot of time and energy and that the eSafety Commissioner will have a very hard time keeping up with and confronting regulations. “It means you’re going to have a hard time,” she says. .
However, Dr. Einstein presented a different picture. Young people want to take a break from social media, but they don’t know how.
“When I talk to young people in school, I say, ‘Dr. Einstein, what do you think? I want to get out of that, how can I do that? Everyone else is on board with it. That’s what we do. “How do you communicate?” They want change,” she says.
Concerns about ‘hasty’ legislation
Even politicians and experts who claim to support some sort of restriction on social media users, in theory, are wondering why this restriction had to be rushed through in the last legislative week of the year and the details of the law. I have doubts as to whether they were forced to suspend such consideration. short.
The committee’s report noted that almost all of the 102 submissions published raised concerns about the “extremely short” consultation period.
The bill was introduced in Parliament last Thursday and referred to a Senate inquiry on the same day. Submissions to the inquiry closed next Friday, a three-hour public hearing was held on Monday, and the report was tabled on Tuesday.
The bill was passed by parliament two days later, at the end of a mammoth day in which the government pushed through more than 30 bills.
Headspace’s Nicole Palfrey said at the hearing: “I wish we had more time to think about the nuances…Some of us are so naive as to think that everything is good and everything is bad. There’s no one there,” he said.
In the run-up to a Senate vote late Thursday night, the Green Party and some crossbenchers expressed similar concerns.
Coalition senator Richard Colbeck was one of the few opposition members to break with his party and voice his opposition to the bill before abstaining from the vote.
“The concept of excluding sections of the population from the means of communication does not sit well with me at all,” he told the Senate Thursday night.
“We respect the arguments of our colleagues who think we should do something, and obviously we think we should do something, but this is not the way to do it.”
