Kate Emery: Why the social media ban for Australian kids is probably for the best

The future is an excellent vantage point from which to observe the past if you like being a smug git. And, really, who doesn’t? The 2025 version of us can laugh at the idea that 19th century doctors didn’t feel it necessary to wash their hands, as though we would have come up with germ theory all on our own. And we can snicker at the idea that video games were once a source of moral panic when we spent our formative years ripping out our rivals’ spines on Mortal Kombat and turned out fine. Just as germ theory is now widely accepted — although give US Health Secretary RFK Jr time and he’ll probably decide hand-washing causes autism too — fears that video games would turn a generation into violent, desensitised psychopaths have largely disappeared. The results of a nearly 20-year study by Bond University and the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association, released Monday, found roughly half of all parents believe video games help children learn and games of some kind are used in 42 per cent of Australian schools. A growing number of parents view playing games with their kids as quality time. There are a few reasons why video games are now so accepted as mainstream entertainment. For one thing, decades of research has largely debunked the fear that Fortnite is going to turn your kid into a school shooter. For another, video games now seem wholesome when the alternative screen time involves conspiracy theories on Reddit, bathing in accused rapist Andrew Tate’s word vomit or using AI software to “nudify” social media photos of classmates. And if you think the last one sounds unlikely, the country’s eSafety Commissioner flagged on Monday that two services doing just that are getting about 100,000 visits a month from Australia alone and are being used to generate explicit deepfakes of school kids. As Australia’s social media ban for under-16s looms and the nation’s teens gorge on TikTok, like squirrels storing nuts for winter, it’s tempting to wonder how this move will be viewed from the future. Will it be regarded as ahead of its time, a logical response to watching a generation poisoned via smartphone? Or will our 2075 betters roll their eyes about how naïve we were to imagine there was anything so bad about teens mainlining YouTube? There are a couple of reasons to believe it could be more the former than the latter. Comparing social media to past moral panics like video games, rap music or — this one still makes me laugh — Dungeons and Dragons isn’t entirely fair. Social media isn’t just content, it runs on algorithms that are designed to lead users into more extreme content. It’s the equivalent of a game of Grand Theft Auto ending with a pop-up asking if the player wants to watch someone murder sex workers and cops for real this time. There’s also a wealth of research suggesting that social media is bad for young people’s mental health. That research isn’t as clear cut as it’s sometimes made out to be — social media can be a lifeline of connection for some. But, in general, social media is bad for young people’s mental health and worse for teenage girls. Part of that is being exposed to messed up beauty standards, part of it is about the risk of cyberbullying and part of it is about the online world replacing invaluable in-person connections. There are more parts but, alas, only so much column space. Scepticism about whether the ban will work is warranted but possibly overblown. Age verification for social media is possible but will require a grab bag of solutions. That’s according to encouraging research that, it must be noted, was commissioned by the Government. Finally, there may be a parallel to the ban on vaping. The vape ban is imperfect: young people still know where to find vapes and those who don’t might be turning to cigarettes instead. But vaping rates are falling, down from 17.5 per cent to 14.6 per cent among 14-17-year-olds since 2023. The only people who expect the social media ban to keep every kid under 16 off social media probably also believe every cardboard sign they see at traffic intersections. But, by raising the barrier to entry, the ban should see fewer kids on social media and for less time. If it works to plan that means for more time for kids to see others in real life, play a game of Dungeons and Dragons, listen to some rap music or, sure, play a video game or two.