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- Why social media bans don't work
The way our government talks about social media has always been frustrating, but the past few weeks have reached a new level of insufferability. According to politicians from across the political spectrum, banning kids younger than 16 from social media will solve: the youth mental health crisis; misogynistic beliefs in boys and men’s violence against women; image-based abuse; bullying; behavioural problems; and improve academic performance in schools. What a miracle cure it would be! I can at least understand why many (mostly older) people desperately want this to be true.
Look, are digital platforms problematic? Yes. Do the tech giants that own them operate in ways that undermine democracy and healthy societies? Yes. But none of this will be even remotely addressed by kicking kids off social media, and I am going to tell you exactly why the idea is so bad, lazy and ultimately will not work.
What even is social media?
If we’re going to talk about banning kids from social media, then we should agree on what exactly we’re banning them from. All the politicians who spruik these ideas and the media reporting that follows mention Instagram and TikTok specifically. Fair enough. But they rarely namecheck Snapchat, despite the fact that almost 60% of users are aged 13-24.
Going beyond this, what else do we classify as ‘social media’? Do forums like Reddit, Discord and Geneva count? And if so, how are those different to large WhatsApp or Messenger chat groups? What about sites like Tumblr and AO3? Almost all video games now feature online interaction with other players – sometimes people you know, sometimes people you don’t. Is that social media too? Some media sites feature comment sections: the Daily Mail, Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Age/Sydney Morning Herald, Crikey, The Australian… Where do these fit on the spectrum of online platforms that publish user generated content? The comments sections are usually moderated, but so is the content on ‘social media’ platforms.
My point being: it’s very difficult to regulate something that is poorly defined.
Age-verification is not accurate or safe
Digital platforms and many Internet spaces (including porn sites) already have age restrictions in place. Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat don’t allow users under the age of 13, but users give their age using self-identification. Of course under the same system, 15-year-olds would just reduce their birth year by one to get around bans. What is being proposed instead?
The government announced funding a trial of ‘age assurance’ technology on porn sites. While the exact tech is TBC, this type of technology could require all users to provide something to verify their identity: a drivers’ licence, credit card or passport. This is an obvious and huge privacy risk; even institutions held to the highest security standards, like Australian banks, have been hacked and had customer data stolen. Users accounts on digital platforms are hacked every day. Porn sites will not do a better job at this.
‘Age estimation’ tech uses facial recognition, voice recognition, browsing data and other online profiles to guess how old a user is. You might feel this is less invasive than handing over your drivers license, but it’s definitely less accurate. Facial recognition tech is often stumped by: people who are not white, people aged over 26, and boys aged 0-12.
Crikey journalist Cam Wilson (and friend of Zee Feed!) just this week published his own age-id experiment, in which he pretended to be a 12-year-old girl and tricked facial analysis tech into letting him buy a knife. On LinkedIn, one ‘security expert’ responded to Cam’s experiment by suggesting that requiring everyone to do a 500-point government ID check would be a helpful solution to the problem of… keeping kids and teens off social media.
If you’re still unsure whether it’s an unreasonable ask, let’s finally talk about the impact of social media on young minds.
Evidence shows bans don’t work
So far, the evidence does not justify banning kids at all regardless of the reasons given. This piece on The Conversation examined research related to school phone bans, revealing insights including: 99% of kids who are cyberbullied are also bullied face-to-face; bans have little to no impact on academic performance; bans contribute to the school environment feeling more negative and punitive; and studies that did show positive impacts on student mental health relied on teacher and parents’ perceptions but did not actually ask the students.
The evidence around social media use and mental health generally is more contested. A 2023 study found Gen Z had more negative feelings about social media than older generations, and felt it contributed to low self-confidence and body image issues (particularly for young women). But it’s hard to measure whether social media is making these issues worse for teens today, as so much has changed besides technology alone.
A 2017 study from the UK found that while young people felt social media platforms contributed to poor quality sleep, FOMO and anxious feelings, the apps also contributed positively to their self-identity, self-expression, community connection and feeling emotionally supported by others.
A lot of the research into youth mental health issues tends to examine general smartphone use or ‘screentime’, as opposed to just social media. Even then, the results are quite mixed. A recent survey of US teens found only 25% say they ‘often feel peaceful’ when they don’t have their phone with them. Only 32% say they often feel happy. While 47% said they sometimes feel peaceful, 34% say the sometimes feel anxious without their phones. Feeling ‘sometimes peaceful’ doesn’t exactly prove getting kids offline will bring them mental wellness.
We do have a youth mental health crisis in Australia. We do have a violent patriarchal culture that harms young women and girls. As I wrote for The Politics this week, digital platforms can be used as tools to perpetuate these harms but they are not the root cause of the issue. The Australia that existed before social media – or the Internet, even – was not less violent or misogynistic than the nation we have now.
Why do politicians keep suggesting this?
The fact that politicians keep bringing up this idea has less to do with whether they think it will actually help kids (I don’t think they genuinely care about this*), and more to do with the role social media plays in a politician’s life. Their careers are entirely dependent on public perception. Social media is a place they get a lot of criticism and negative feedback, and it’s difficult for them to separate that from how the average person uses and experiences these platforms.
Basically, for Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton social media is a hellscape where people are constantly yelling about how much they suck; and they assume it is similar for us.
Final thoughts
Social media, digital platforms, smartphones and the Internet are all tools that are now essential for modern life, whether we like that or not. We have to teach kids how to use these tools properly and how to mitigate the negative impacts. Hell, most adults still need to learn those things! This newsletter is already too long so I won’t get into better solutions… but I do want to leave you with an anecdote from this article by a UK professor. It’s the perfect metaphor for the conversation we’re having in Australia right now:
“I recall delivering an assembly to a group of year six children (aged ten and 11) one Safer Internet Day a few years ago. A boy in the audience told me he had a YouTube channel where he shared video game walkthroughs with his friends. I asked if he’d ever received nasty comments on his platform and if he’d talked to any staff about it at his school. He said he had, but he would never tell a teacher because ‘they’ll tell me off for having a YouTube channel.’
This was confirmed after the assembly by the headteacher, who said they told young people not to do things on YouTube because it was dangerous. I suggested that empowering what was generally a positive experience might result in the young man being more confident to talk about negative comments – but was met with confusion and repetition of ‘they shouldn’t be on there.’”
Smart stuff on the Internet 💭
All the stuff I found on the web that made me think, smile, or have an ‘aha!’ moment. Spend your Sunday reading them – you'll be better off for it:
What If Motherhood Isn’t Transformative at All? on The Cut
This might be the best writing on this topic I’ve ever read. Treating motherhood as an identity category can help women make sense of their experience, broadcast its challenges effectively, and find the support they need to navigate it. But it comes at a cost to mothers and non-mothers alike. The assumption of obligatory identity change can imply that our myriad other identities will necessarily be flattened or even lost."
Australia’s feminists are finally being memorialised. Can we grapple with their racism? on Crikey
With a biography or equivalently detailed work, it’s possible (though not inevitable) to tell a multifaceted story; commemorative efforts like prizes and statues are concerned more with celebration than truth-telling and ambivalence.
Oh My God, I’m Attracted to a Skinny White Man on Vice Australia
Smart & hilarious! The tabloid media has invented another way to explain people’s attraction to the actual status quo. They’re not objectively ugly dudes, they’re “sexy rat men”, and the internet is currently filled up with articles explaining their “rise”.