New social media age limit legislation is set to be introduced before the next election, to protect the mental health and safety of children and young teens — but will it work?
The Albanese government announced the proposed ban last week, with the age limit and implementation plan yet to be outlined.
Experts worry the ban alone is not enough to achieve cyber safety for teens, and that it would raise new concerns about what happens when teens age out of the ban — but parents who have experienced the worst-case outcomes say any action is a positive.
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Experts also believe that the funding required to implement the ban could be better spent educating young users and their parents, legislating social media companies, and resourcing further support frameworks.
A total ban on social media will also take away the benefits of social media, adversely affecting marginalised youth groups, Senior Lecturer at RMIT Dr Dana McKay told 7NEWS.com.au.
“For kids who might not do so well in social situations, such as neurodivergent kids … shifting that interaction online and slowing it down a bit can help,” McKay said.
“They’re just trying to use a very blunt instrument to address a problem that can’t be addressed,” she said.
“It’s just pushing the problem onto older age groups, who parents have less influence over.”
It is also unclear what will count as social media, with platforms like YouTube a possible grey area.
Many of the problems associated with social media can also occur outside of it, McKay said.
Of all the problems associated with social media, McKay feels only the exposure to extremist beliefs is a new one.
She thinks that, rather than a ban, government legislation requiring tech companies to monitor and remove extremist content would be more effective.
Tech companies have basically had total freedom for years, and now we’re trying to change that, McKay said.
“Instead of reigning them in, we take one of the few benefits they’ve created away,” she said. “That doesn’t seem like a win to me.”
Social media should be made safer for kids, not exclude them, she said.
Meta already has products like Messenger Kids for children under 13, which could be required for children under 14 or 16.
“Kids have to have conversations that we’re not a part of,” McKay said. “It’s better to have them when they’re young and can be guided.”
Associate Professor at the University of NSW Susanne Schweizer also has concerns about the ban, which she thinks “could be the silver bullet, or backfire terribly”.
“I don’t see how (it could be effectively implemented) at this stage,” she told 7NEWS.com.au. “A blanket application could present huge risks. It lacks nuance.
“Taking away the thing as a whole in not going to be the most effective means of keeping kids safe.”
The ban would take away young people’s autonomy, Schweizer said.
Social media “provides a means of self-expression” for young people, and a means to explore new interests and ideas.
Schweizer believes that “strong investment in education and digital literacy” would mitigate the potential harms of social media while still providing teenagers with the autonomy they need to grow.
‘Hounded’ by pro-eating disorder content
Albanese introduced the proposed ban for children under 14 years old, but said he personally hopes it will be set at the age of 16.
Victorian father Robb Evans is one person both pushing for the ban, and for the ban’s age limit to be set at 16. He lost his daughter Liv to an eating disorder at the age of 15, just one year after she began using social media.
“I don’t know that I’ve met a more gentle and beautiful, caring soul as her,” Robb told 7NEWS.com.au.
Liv died of anorexia nervosa, a mental disorder with physical consequences that, while triggered by bullying that occurred offline, was fuelled by toxic content until the condition became fatal.
“She knew what it was that caused her eating disorder,” citing an incident he doesn’t speak publicly about. “But unfortunately, she didn’t talk about it for 18 months, so there was a lot of time there in between for things to manifest into something more sinister.”
Liv loved nature, animals, drawing and art, “and, ironically, cooking” and though she initially started using social media to search for craft ideas and new recipes, her Instagram algorithm eventually shifted to focus on “how to become a better anorexic”.
She learned how to avoid weight gain, and how to fake those kilograms during clinical tests as she came in and out of hospital 40 different times.
“We believe that (information) all came from social media … Liv showed me some of this stuff on her Instagram,” Robb said.
Robb, who works as a health and fitness coach, said he is “sickened” by the impact of dangerous misinformation, after once having to disprove a social media claim Liv brought to him which asserted that a person can live off 200 calories a day.
“Other girls who knew Liv — who also had eating disorders but are now recovered — said they were just hounded by that stuff, as soon as they started to search for it, that was just coming through their feed.
“I just think that, at the age of 13, how do they know what’s real and what’s AI generated, what’s fake, what’s inauthentic? They just don’t know.”
Has social media become worse?
Jess*, aged in her late 20s, still struggles with the eating disorder she formed in her teens.
She also fears for the next generation, and the ways the current social media landscape is affecting them.
“For a while I thought it was getting better,” she said. “But it just seemed like in the last few years it’s become way worse than we ever had it.”
Jess’s eating disorder “thrived” on social media platforms like Tumblr, but it wasn’t just social media that impacted her self-image.
“We had magazines and TV shows and movies, all our media basically, telling us that if you didn’t fit the ‘cocaine chic’ look you were fat,” she said.
She worries that ultra-thin bodies are back in trend on apps like TikTok, and modern youth “can’t escape it or turn it off the way we could”.
However, Jess feels that “banning social media is pretending the problem only exists there” and that those pressures don’t exist outside of it.
“We still have all that media that we grew up with, it’s just that the algorithm on TikTok is six times worse,” she said.
“That doesn’t mean what’s in that magazine is OK, or that it won’t impact kids. We still have people on TV telling us not to eat refined sugar or whatever.
“People will still have eating disorders without social media.”
Jess thinks people have forgotten that trends existed before social media, and kids have always influenced each other to do things.
“I remember girls trading methods for losing weight before formal, we didn’t need TikTok for that,” she said.
While Jess thinks there are issues with social media, and something needs to be done, she doesn’t think it’s “all bad”.
A blanket ban “kind of feels like we’re just shifting the blame around”.
“Social media wasn’t all bad,” she said.
“I kept in touch with girls who went to other high schools through it, I was able to find people who were interested in the same things I was.
“I think it really helped me grow as a person and … was a positive thing overall.”
Clamping down on corporations
TikTok, Instagram and YouTube have already brought in some measures to combat social media’s negative influence, such as redirecting searches for content about eating disorders to related support providers, such as the Butterfly National Helpline.
Similar measures were also applied on Tumblr, where pro-anorexic content was rife in recent years. Searches for the topic now prompt an automated response asking users: “Everything okay?”
But it is possible to click past such blocks to access content, and other forums are also filled with tricks, such as spelling variations, for getting around banned content tags on social media platforms. 7NEWS.com.au has contacted Tumblr for comment.
Eating disorder experts at the Butterfly Foundation note the devastating impacts social media can have but believe a total ban is not the way forward.
Butterfly has instead recommended regulatory changes be made to require social media transparency “about their algorithms, with regular publicly available algorithm risk audits from independent bodies.”
It also recommended that social media data be accessible to researchers, that users have the option to reset their algorithm on demand, and that there are financial and other punitive consequences established for non-compliance by social media companies.
“I think we should be making the companies make their platforms safe,” Jess said.
Liv’s dad Robb Evers, who is pro-ban, also agreed on legislative action on social media companies: “We need to push back on the social media companies. They should be leading this, to create a very safe platform, but it’s just about dollars.”
While it was dangerous content that fuelled Liv’s fatal condition, it was online bullying that led to the suicide of 14-year-old Dolly Everett in 2018.
Dolly’s parents applied pressure on parliament, during a 2021 parliamentary inquiry into the dangers of social media, for a greater focus on the impact social media has on children, after Dolly’s death.
‘How much is a life worth?’
Mac Holdsworth died by suicide last year on October 24, at the age of 17, after he was sextorted through social media. His father, Wayne Holdsworth, is supportive of any action taken to address the problem.
If it saves one life, it will be worth it, he said. “I am absolutely, 100 per cent, in support of the ban,” Holdsworth said.
Kids spend hours online each day, where “it’s like the Wild Wild West”, he said.
It’s not going to be easy to implement the ban, but “we have to do something”, Holdsworth said.
“At the moment, there’s nothing being done. How much is a life worth? If we save one life, I’d say it’s worth it.”
While Holdsworth supports the ban, and believes it should be enforced for teens aged 16 and under, he thinks far more action needs to be taken.
“I’m really critical of Meta,” he said. “They also have a responsibility to provide a safe environment. At the moment, they don’t.
“Kids just say they’re 18, and they’re in. They need to play under our rules, they need to follow our laws and values, and they don’t.
“If we had cars that were unsafe, we wouldn’t distribute them. It’s just not right.”
A “cultural change” is also required, Holdsworth said.
“I have a view that no person under 18 should get a smartphone,” he added.
He also thinks that social media literacy education should form part of our curriculums in school, where we have a “captive audience”.
Holdsworth runs SmackTalk, a charity focused on mental health support and suicide prevention. This sort of education is “critical at school level”, he said.
Preventative work is vital and more government funding should go towards it, he said.
A new initiative SmackTalk has created is Unplugged 24, encouraging people to unplug from social media for 24 hours to mark the anniversary of Mac’s death on October 24.
You can register for Unplugged 24 on the SmackTalk website.
“We want to show we’re taking control of social media and social media’s not controlling us,” Holdsworth said.
Pushing the burden onto parents
Meta has publicly said it believes age limits should be enforced by app stores, which would alert parents if their child is trying to download a social media app.
Experts have raised concerns that leaving kids’ safety to parents alone could unfairly put the responsibility on women and mothers.
“One of the really obvious benefits (of social media) for teens in particular is maintaining their own relationships with members of their social community (and), extended family,” McKay said.
Without social media, parents will have to step up to manage their children’s social lives and ensure they don’t become isolated.
She fears this responsibility will end up with mothers, who already bear the burden of the mental load in households.
Jess thinks those in power are simply “out of touch”.
“They know you can open TikTok on a computer, right?” she said. “I went on Tumblr on my school laptop. It’s like they don’t remember what it’s like to be under 40.
“The kids who had the strictest parents always went the most crazy when they got a taste of freedom.”
At the end of the day, Jess thinks that kids will simply lie to gain access to social media, the way she and all her friends did.
She believes those currently in power “probably lied to do something they weren’t allowed to as well”.
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” she said.
*Names have been changed for anonymity.