There’s a good reason why the social media ban won’t work, and the government knows it

3 months ago 23

Cooped up in a school science lab about a decade ago, I tinkered away on a more important STEM project. I was altering the HTML on my Tumblr site to add a music player widget. Visitors would be greeted by an acoustic One Direction cover of Jason Mraz’s I’m Yours – followed by some Bon Iver, for credibility.

Trying to access Facebook or Instagram while on school grounds returned only an error message. But the grown-ups in charge hadn’t kept up with the meteoric rise of the blogging platform that peaked in popularity in 2014. It was open season.

The government’s social media ban may lead to unintended consequences.

The teachers couldn’t have known their selective ban would allow us to dedicate more time to our craft. One of my classmates quickly ascended to the status of “Tumblr-famous”, landing a modelling contract. Tens of thousands of unsuspecting followers relished nuggets of life and style advice dished out from the Year 8 homeroom.

And because girls shouldn’t have all the fun, I’m reliably informed that X, then known as Twitter, was at the same time experiencing an unlikely surge in sign-ups from young men trapped in the ivory towers of private school boarding houses.

Porn sites were blocked. The social networking platform that happily hosts graphic content was not.

As recently pointed out by The Sizzle tech newsletter editor Cam Wilson, it’s comical that most Australian parents, the very people the government seems to be appeasing with its kids’ social media ban, believe X is an appropriate space for minors. You only have to open the app once in an open-plan office to learn what you can be exposed to with a wayward scroll.

‘Unsuspecting followers relished nuggets of life advice dished out from the Year 8 homeroom.’

At another Sydney school, boys were rumoured to have uploaded adult images of my underage peers to a communal Google Drive. Who needs social media at all?

Children will always find a way to circumnavigate your online roadblocks because they know the terrain better than you – or I, as a geriatric Gen Z – do.

Suggesting that kids across the country will bamboozle lawmakers with VPNs or by retreating to digital dens we haven’t heard of yet is not a new proposition. Natassia Chrysanthos reported late last year that the majority of Australians, almost 70 per cent of those surveyed for this masthead, were sceptical the plan would be effective.

Now, we’ve conducted our own tests to investigate what a child with no social media accounts could still be privy to after the ban kicks in on December 10. The results aren’t promising. In a non-empirical experiment (I was distracted during science class, after all), Herald staff scrolled TikTok and YouTube on a private browser.

Over the years, I’ve trained my TikTok algorithm to serve me bar recommendations, travel guides, and, sure, a touch of news here and there. But in incognito mode, with no search history to govern what we were offered up, tip-offs on where to find a $10 coconut margarita in the eastern suburbs were replaced with more disquieting content.

A homophobic “joke”, a racist AI imagining of a cultural group taking over Sydney and a movie scene depicting masturbation were among the videos that popped up within three-and-a-half minutes. This feels like an opportune time to mention that the average Australian primary schooler is said to rack up six-and-a-half hours of screentime a day.

The holes in this legislation are gaping, and to me, indicate that while Anthony Albanese and his ministers may have no idea how Gen Alphas really use social media, they do know one thing – their ban won’t work. And they don’t particularly care.

In a media release published on the prime minister’s website after the bill was introduced back in November, the first paragraph reads, “Yesterday, I announced our Government is going to create a new minimum age for access to social media… This is all about supporting parents and protecting children.”

In black and white, pandering comes before protection. Albanese says he wants parents to be able to tell their whingeing teens, “Sorry, mate, it’s against the law”. But if shouldering the blame on behalf of Australian mums and dads is the government’s true objective, I’m not sure it’ll be any more successful in achieving that aim.

When you tell your 10-year-old they can’t have a Facebook account, will they take it out on you or write a letter to the communications minister?

The PM readily likens the legislation to rules barring under-18s from the pub, but it is rare that we accept a blanket ban, rather than education, to safeguard children. Teenagers are not forbidden from having sex; they squirm as PDHPE teachers explain contraception and consent. Senior students are not prohibited from getting behind the wheel; they suffer through more than 100 hours of back-seat drivers gripping the headrests.

If we legitimately want to arm children for the reign of tech oligarchs, social media literacy must be considered as essential a benchmark as mastering the alphabet.

Meg Kanofski is the Sydney Morning Herald’s social media editor.

Get a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up for our Opinion newsletter.