Social Media: To Ban or Not to Ban
Part 3: A Parenting Conundrum About Internet Access
In part 1 of this series “Part 1: The government’s opening salvo“, we explored a brief and incomplete history of internet filtering in Australia. The statistics of sextortion across Australia and Meta’s move to introduce Instagram Teen Accounts.
In the second part “Part 2: There is more than one way to skin the cat“, we highlighted the results from the Better Phone Project research. The majority of parents in the five participating countries think negatively of technology and social media for children.
In this final part we look at some of the issues in a making social media illicit to children and the potential impact.
Kevin would like to thank Zsofi Paterso, CEO of Tinybeans for her earlier contributions. Also a big thank you to DRN editors Brendan Hawke and Lis Petersen for their insights and proof reading.
The TL;DR
I believe a legislative ban on social media for children is ineffective and overly simplistic. Technology evolves much faster than laws, and such a ban would push social media use underground, making it harder to regulate. Instead of relying on government mandates, there is a need for education starting at a young age, teaching kids cyber safety, resilience, and responsible online behaviour. The bottom line is, there is always a need for parenting.
What’s Kevin’s Take?
This topic is vast and difficult to tackle.
As I explained in Part 1, I actually started on this when writing about genAI and Terms of Service for the Tinybean editorial. I took onboard the sage advice from the team to approach this topic separately. There are many materials and arguments to read and consider as well as the shifting sands, such as the surprise announcement from Instagram.
It is somewhat reassuring to see the industry taking steps to address an endemic issue for our children. Whilst the cynical would say Instagram is reacting to the Australian Federal Government’s stance, the reality is feature sets and development require lead time to execute.
HMD is approaching the issue from a different perspective; they want to engage with different stakeholders to be part of the journey and create a solution version from a hardware angle.
Meta is approaching it from a curated experience perspective.
The Australian Government however is coming in like Thor hot off the Bifröst with a sledge Mjölnir angle.
I hope that at some stage all key stakeholders can meet in a collaborative way which will foster numerous innovative thoughts on how to effect a positive change. Fundamentally we all have the same end goal.
Personally, I believe relying on legislation to govern technology is an exercise in futility.
Why? Technology might as well move at light speed, compared to legislation that is a slow, cumbersome beast. By the time a piece of legislation is drafted, public consultation conducted, reviewed, debated, argued and voted on, technology has changed.
Policy makers are hardly at the bleeding edge of technology, and even fewer would have the comprehensive understanding of the nuances of the technology that they are seeking to govern.
The war drums have long been beating in Australia on banning children from social media, starting in South Australia and is now gaining bipartisan support nationally. Around the world many countries are or have looked at age limits but, as to the effectiveness of actual enforcement, the jury is still out.
I wholeheartedly agree social media can be harmful. Full stop. For all ages, genders and identities. Where “sport is a great equaliser that can build bridges, transcend borders and cultures, and render even the fiercest conflicts temporarily irrelevant.” – Richard Attias, so can social media, in that it transcends borders, genders, cultures. Social media is the modern contact sport which claims the livelihood (and at times, lives) of young people indiscriminately.
But to propose a blanket ban on “social media” and “other digital platforms” that is yet to be defined, until potentially sixteen years of age (Prime Minister Albanese’s preference) is an authoritarian, simpleton approach to a complex tapestry, and a shirking of responsibility which belongs to all of us at the end of the day. And South Australia, what the hell is “more a force for good than harm”? That statement is as conflicted as Obi-Wan saying “What I told you was true, from a certain point of view.”
Australia like much of the western world sits in their high castle and bang on about human rights when it suits them. For this particular matter, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in General comment No. 25 (2021) on children’s rights in relation to the digital environment had this to say.
“The rights of every child must be respected, protected and fulfilled in the digital environment. Innovations in digital technologies affect children’s lives and their rights in ways that are wide-ranging and interdependent, even where children do not themselves access the Internet. Meaningful access to digital technologies can support children to realize the full range of their civil, political, cultural, economic and social rights. However, if digital inclusion is not achieved, existing inequalities are likely to increase, and new ones may arise.”
So here we are, blithely proceeding on a vague noble notion of “protecting our children” without full consideration of what it means. Our aim should be to provide an environment which fosters the growth and future well-adjusted adult members of society via appropriate education and exposure. I have a few children at different school ages and love how cyber security and privacy is deeply embedded in the education curriculum at the schools my children have attended. But it also requires me to have an open dialogue with my children, and gain their trust to speak to us, their parents, about what is happening online.
It is my view and fear that a government lead ban will only drive access of some form of social media underground, perhaps into the dark web, perhaps into another form altogether well away from the Clearnet. The question is, who is going to identify threat actors behind these new services? Ideally big technology companies would collaborate to mitigate these risks, but the reality is our tech savvy children may be exposed to threats long before any constructive solution is reached.
As parents, we try to educate our children, foster their uniqueness and individualities, and celebrate their differences. We encourage them to explore, find their voice, and find their passion. Now we are looking at bipartisan support to effectively paint each and every person (nominally) under the age of 16 as a single, nameless entity. No individuality, no consideration of their personal needs, or how under the right guidance and support, digital resources can be beneficial for all.
The take away from the HMD study and also the Instagram Teen Accounts features, is that there is no one size fits all solution. Neither do they claim their solution will solve all problems.
About half of the Australian parents (54%) in the HMD study want more guidance, and 53% wants the government to provide that guidance. Further, it aligns with 47% who wants to be able to access a trusted source of advice about children and screen time. None of it screams out that Australian parents wants to have their parenting responsibilities taken out of their hands by legislation.
A legislated approach to a “single villain” is ripe for lulling the most at-risk, the uninitiated parents, into a false sense of security.
Regardless, it is likely that the government of the day will ram this legislation through, given the bipartisan support it is enjoying (something the Australian Indigenous Voice referendum didn’t get). We have been here before, in my less than comprehensive aforementioned list.
So how are we going to implement the new legislation? The most effective ways I can think of is repealing net neutrality, and deploying something like the Great Firewall of China, or a Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Kwangmyong (can we call it Wombogaroo)? Maybe an Egyptian style internet kill switch?
Perhaps we can get into deep packet inspection territory, or asking technology giants to collect, analyse and store more personally identifiable information for the very demographics we are trying to protect. Wouldn’t that be ironic, Alanis?
As Zsofi Paterson, CEO of Tinybeans had said in her interview with DRN, “AI technology, with its advanced capabilities in image recognition, data mining, and deep learning, poses significant risks to privacy, especially for children’s images. AI algorithms can easily scan social media and other online platforms to identify, collect, and analyse children’s photos. These images can then be used to create detailed profiles, track activities, and even predict behaviours.”
As a society we are already up in arms on privacy concerns. But the social media ban as proposed by the Australian government only serves to further erode on our privacy. I do not trust the ability of our government agencies and have opted out of eHealth. The prospect of a legislation which rides across the line into these territories frankly scares the bejesus out of me.
Other Thoughts
For my preppie, she has had formal body privacy talks at school. They are regularly discussing online safety, cyber bullying and online engagement. These are important conversations to have between children and parents, and parents need to support and reinforce the message taught by schools.
While my daughter is a long way from the age to qualify for her own social media accounts, as it stands now, it is hard to avoid seeing it everywhere in the contents available to her. However, as her parents, Anita and I have the added challenges of managing our daughter’s public image due to her occasional work in front of the camera.
As she grows older our job is to temper the attention and perceived criticisms (and trolls). We also realise that it is impossible to control anything that is out in the wild, and we have to teach her toughness and resilience.
There is no amounts of legislation, regulations or technical solutions that will teach that to my child.
This view is echoed by Marty McGauran, a Victorian cyber safety educator and founder of Inform & Empower. In his view, prohibition is not the answer, it is just a start in the long road to protect young people online.
Last Words
Children should be given more time to develop both cognitively and emotionally.
It is crucial for parents to be vigilant about their children’s online presence.
I stand firmly against the notion of a legislative ban on social media for the many reasons listed in this series of editorials. It will be ineffective and provide a false sense of security for hands off parenting.
To further complicate the issue, Prime Minister Albanese has asked the States and territories to explain how they plan on implementing wraparound measures to support young people. This includes impacts of withdrawal, creating alternate ways of social connection and community, as well as support for vulnerable groups like rural or remote teens, LGBTQI+ communities and Indigenous groups.
Perhaps I am the simpleton, but I would have thought the logical beginning would be to empower our educators at all levels to … educate. Get their buy in, use their knowledge and passion to create solutions. Invest in them so they are not burning out and leaving the profession in droves. Start at every age group and reinforce the message in the curriculum.
We can’t change a culture by starting children’s education at sixteen years old; this is akin to building a skyscraper from the top down. What we need to do is start as early as possible to foster the values which will make our children champion the causes and values and critical appraisal skills. By strengthening diversity of people, thoughts and culture, we in turn empower social media consumers, regardless of age, to be social media savvy.
But instead, the effort is focused on a blanket ban, which then we devote resources and funding to figure out a “wraparound”. The conversation we should be having as a society is how do we foster and steer the voices of our future in a safe and positive manner. Instead, we attempt to stifle them and expect them to magically work it out when thrown off the deep end.
To me this is a prime example of just how little we value our future voices and the roles of our educators.
Lastly, HMD is also keen to work with anyone who is interested in this subject and would like to be part of the conversation to create change and new solutions. This includes Generation Z, influencers, policymakers, campaigners and support groups. You can sign-up to be involved at https://www.hmd.com/en_int/better-phone-project.
