Australia’s Social Media Ban

Important to note that this is not in any way actually a "ban" on children's use of social media. It affects only the holding of an account. Children are still able to access any and all social media that allow access without an account. Hence they may freely continue view any and all content on Youtube, X, TikTok etc. On the other hand, it does silence them and force them to be passive observers of such content.

The law is highly ill conceived and cannot possibly fulfill its stated aims. When introduced to Australian parliament, it was extremely rushed, providing just a single day for any public feedback to be submitted. Clearly the proponents knew that while its has great politically shrewd sound bites such as "save our children", it was so flawed in its construction that they couldn't afford to let it be scrutinised before being rammed through.

@Graham most of these services are already unusable without an account. Instagram for example severely limits what can be seen without an account. This is just more ammo for them to continue and worsen that practice.

Also I don’t think there’s any question that social media is bad for kids. It’s bad for everyone. But this is more than likely just another lever to pull towards more government control over the internet in general. Think of the children, after all.

@Bart I don't think "most" is correct - eg. the three major platforms I named. I also strongly question your blanket assumption that social media is somehow universally bad. It is simply a modern aspect of society which is still rather unrefined in many ways, and as with many other aspects of society, kids need and benefit from parental guidance and oversight. And here's the thing. When kids DO have accounts, those accounts can have child appropriate restrictions put onto them. By imposing a simplistic, blunt, blanket ban such accounts, kids will inevitably simply resort to non-account based consumption of social media instead - and hence without possibility of controls designed specifically for them. Fortunately I see that a number of other countries considering social media legislation are not falling onto the same blanket-ban trap. I seriously hope Australia realises its legislative faux pas sooner rather than later and adopts more realistic and potentially effective mechanisms.

@Graham

Social Media is certainly universally bad - because of the algorithms all social media companies use to increase 'engagement' which ends up heavily promoting anger-inducing content as well as the dopamine effect of the 'likes' system which encourages people to sell their souls / act the fool for likes.

It's not a normal or healthy way to live.

The attempt to ban social media may well be misguided - better to educate people as to why they are better off not using it and provide healthier alternatives.

PS. I don't see Youtube as social media - just media.

No discussion of this issue looking at Australia's example should take place without a clear understanding of the character of Australia's Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, because this is very much a Him project.

"Albo" grew up in taxpayer-funded public housing, with a single mother on a taxpayer-funded disability pension, at a time when public housing was widely available, and a single disability pension could cover the costs of raising a child (this is his log-cabin origin story, which he wheels out at every opportunity).

Neither of these are true under Albo, and neither of them are priorities for Albo to fix.

Albo became involved in and helped to organise protest movements as a child to save his public housing when the state government of the day wanted to redevelop it, and move all the inner-city public housing residents to the outer suburbs, in an act of active gentrification.

Revitalising public housing is not a priority for Albo to fix.

Albo finished high school, and went to work in a bank, where you go to work in the 1980s to get an employee-discount on mortgage rates.

Lowering the cost of housing (which is driven almost entirely by tax breaks for property speculators, like Albo, and most other Australian politicians from the big two parties who represent the centre-right, and less-centre-more-right), so a single person working as a retail staffer, or bank teller can get a mortgage is not a priority for Albo to fix.

Albo lasted only two years working in the private sector at the bank, then went to university, which was free and entirely funded by the taxpayer, as was the study pension / unemployment payment. He became involved in student politics for the youth wing of the Labor party, which thought of itself as left-wing, and demonstrates the same possessiveness of left-wing issues (and the electorates which have left-wing voting majorities) that the landed gentry feel about their estates & serfs.

Making university free or affordable for students is not a priority for Albo to fix, neither is improving the rate of unemployment benefits from their current levels which are among the lowest in the developed world, and about 30% below Australia's recognised poverty line. Typically in the entirety of Australia at any one time there are a single digit number of properties (yes less than 10 in the entire country) that can be afforded by a person on unemployment benefits.

After finishing his degree, Albo transitioned through nepotism networks into a career as a staffer and operator for various Labor party parliamentarians, becoming the very model of an apparatchik. His salary was covered either by taxpayer financing for political staffers, or from the dues of union members, whom the Labor party nominally represents.

Eventually, Albo was gifted one of the safest, most working-class, most Labor-voting inner-western-Sydney seats, which he has run in ever since, without ever having to worry about a serious challenge. He is the perfect narrative of a political company man, loyal to the party above all, providing a glowing eulogy at the recent state-funded funeral for one of his party's luminaries; a man who was one of the most corrupt, and corrupting influences ever to grace Australian politics.

Interestingly, banning gambling advertising, which has clear evidence of also being an immensely corrupting force, doing significant harm to children in Australia, not a priority for Albo.

But there's a problem, because having worked his way to the top, Albo's party is dying.

While it may have a record majority of seats in parliament, it achieved that with only 30% of first-choice votes.

Demographically, Albo's party will be extinct within a decade or two. Albo will live to see this happen.

Australian-born children are vastly more likely to sympathise with, and when they reach adulthood vote for The Greens party. They are doing so in greater, and greater numbers, and the demographic trends are very clear - the younger you are in Australia, the more likely you are to vote Greens, and there is no significant evidence of "becoming more conservative as you age" in voting patterns.

Labor has in contrast spent the past decade trying to become more like its more conservative opposition (including selling out to fossil fuel, and American defence industries), to win its voters, and ensuring migration is kept at high enough levels that it can tap new citizens as a source of votes, given they are likely to be socially more conservative than The Greens (regarding queer issues, strong religiosity, etc), and not amenable to the general xenophobia of the conservatives.

The Greens priorities include (explicitly); increasing public housing, increasing welfare payments / UBI, reducing tax breaks for housing speculators, free university, reducing fossil fuels... all the things that Young Albo would have said were Labor policy, but none of which are current Labor policy.

In fact, the most successful Australian government of the pat several decades, was one in which Labor had to rely on a partnership with The Greens to pass legislation.

So Albo hates The Greens. He's in friendly competition with the conservatives, but he HATES the Greens. They have the policy agenda he feels should be his, the electorate seat he holds is slowly skewing greener, and greener, and The Kids kept doing things like organising school strikes where they advocated for policy that aligned with The Greens, not Albo.

That's what this is about. Fundamentally, the social media ban, as a specific solution, is designed to cut off the ability of children to organise outside, and to politicise outside of their specific local circles at a time in which, when they've done so, they've delivered clear, unambiguous rebukes to Albo and his political generation.

Make no mistake, this is about preventing a generation of Greta Thunbergs, who was media shadowbanned the nanosecond she stopped talking about environmentalism and started pointing the finger at economics & politics.

That's what this is about, pure and simple.

@Niall Why do you not see YouTube as social media? It has likes and algorithmic promotion…

I personally thick that algorithmic feeds are bad for humanity.

I'm well aware that the science is spotty. But I know myself, and I know my kids, and I see a brain mushing time sink, and I see the types of stuff that roses to the top, and I've tasted a tiny sliver of what it feels like to chase the algorithm.

It's crap. But yes, there is also good. But to me, the crap outweighs the good.