Summary
Meta has criticized Australia’s new law banning under-16s from social media, claiming the government rushed it without considering young people’s perspectives or evidence.
The law, approved after a brief inquiry, imposes fines of up to $50 million for non-compliance and has sparked global interest as a potential model for regulating social media.
Supporters argue it protects teens from harmful content, while critics, including human rights groups and mental health advocates, warn it could marginalize youth and ignore the positive impacts of social media.
Enforcement and technical feasibility remain significant concerns.
What about the kids who come to terms with their gender or sexuality through social media?
What about the kids who use social media to connect with other people who share their experiences of being visible minorities?
What about the kids who get their sex education from social media because their parents pulled them out of sex ed classes at school and you sure as shit don’t get that stuff on the tv?
What about the kids who never understood that what their uncle is doing to them is actually sexual abuse until they were able to talk about it through the pseudo-anonymity of social media? The kids who learned survival strategies through social media? The kids who only managed not to kill themselves because of the friends they made online?
Do any of them matter?
Of course those things matter. What is important is that minus the social media, we as a society need to build healthy and affirming alternatives to compensate for this gap. The hard part is figuring out what forms those should take and how to keep them from having similar pitfalls.
The reason why the internet is such an effective tool for people in the situations I described is because it’s so incredibly accessible, and because it possible, to some degree, to do so privately.
You can create an LGBTQ club at school, but that doesn’t help the kid who isn’t allowed to go because their parents are hardcore Christians. And I say 'You can…" but the reality is that you actually can’t because this is smalltown Alberta and any attempt to do so would get you tarred and feathered.
The internet can reach at risk people in places that your “local alternatives” will take decades to be accepted in. Place still matters, and even in more progressive countries and states, there are still plenty of localities where local resources simply cannot exist in a way that will take the place of online resources.
You’re talking about abandoning those kids. The ones who need it the most. The ones who can’t talk to the people in their own lives about suicidal thoughts, depression, questions about their sexuality, or whether or not it was OK for the pastor to touch them there because they live the kind of fucked up backwater where you simply cannot have those conversations with the people around you.
The internet, not only the resources, but also the friendships and human connections it provides, can be a lifeline to young people in incredibly difficult circumstances.
There’s a lot of fucked up shit online, and it’s doing a lot of damage, but we have to find a way to address that that doesn’t involve throwing the baby out with the bathwater. These kinds of blanket bans are impractical, impossible to effectively police, and will cause far too much harm for the little good they can accomplish.
There are plenty of places on the internet at large where those resources exist outside of social media. Restricting minors from posting (but not reading) might also be an effective alternative to a total ban. Though in either case there is little you can do to stop them from just lying during sign up
It’s not just about resources, it’s about connections. A lot of people don’t even know where to start looking into something. Asking a question is sometimes the most effective way.
And sometimes it’s not even about questions. Sometimes it’s about living in a small town full of conservative Christians where, as far as you know, you are the only gay kid. And you don’t dare breath a word of that to anyone around you. But online you can be your authentic self, or at least a version of it. You can connect with other people like you, and you can commiserate about what you’re struggling with, and you can maybe not feel so fucking alone.
I’m not sure you really understand just how damaging that kind of isolation is. Not being able to express yourself honestly to anyone is unbelievably destructive to your mental health. It leaves scars that last a lifetime - and in many cases, it cuts that lifetime very, very short.
A social media ban, for a lot of kids, basically locks them into solitary confinement. They live around people who may never love and accept the person they really are. They need some place where they can feel some sliver of human connection. Where they can feel loved and understood. It is, genuinely, very often the difference between life and death.
This is what worries me about social media bans for kids, there are no local resources as readily available and anonymous as the internet for dealing with the issues you mentioned, and I’ve not seen any talk about increasing funding for those sorts of services.
I’m not sure if the good social media provides to these kids outweighs the bad that it’s causing, but at the least I want to see alternatives being discussed.
Seriously? This is legit a concern of yours?! Yall crazy.