A social media ban won't keep my teenagers safe – it will just take away the place they love | Anna Spargo Ryan

II used to sit in front of a huge CRT monitor and wait for my 14,400 baud modem to connect. For a few hours, I talked to my friends via an Internet relay chat (“online”). When I was finished, I got up, left the family room, and spent some time with my cats (“offline”).

The distinction between online and offline has changed a lot since then. Relationships moved from LiveJournal to IRL. We had to use email for work. Banks have closed their physical branches in favor of applications. Slowly but surely, our “online life” became life. Society now straddles two worlds, with the same terrible people congregating at dog parks and neighborhood Facebook groups.

Australian governments this week demonstrated an almost touching naivety on this subject. They worry about young people's vulnerability to “harmful content” – which can include everything from violence and gambling to hate speech and videos of former US presidents – and their proposed solution is simply to delete young people’s “online” content and thus protect them. .

I'm a mom and social media strategist who's been risking her life via the internet since the 90s. My kids are constantly online, which I'm both proud of and horrified about.

First of all: on one level this discussion is moot. Teenagers will circumvent the ban on social networks. A large portion of their parents don't have the technical knowledge to know what their children are doing on their devices. Parental control? Smoke and mirrors. A ban is just an incident. We went out of windows to drink alcohol in a park; the alpha generation will get a VPN so they can watch Crunchyroll. Who will stop these children? You? Me? Chris Minns making daily house calls after dinner?

But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that a general ban is possible. My question to these governments is: why do you hate teenagers?

As with every generational gap since the dawn of time, children themselves worry about it much less than their parents. There are undeniable undertones to this proposition: “kids these days are always on their phones/have no practical skills/are rude to adults.” The panic over the amount of time children spend on social media is strong, but not really supported by solid science.

There are issues that deserve real concern. Children are radicalized through extremist content. They have easy access via social platforms to porn, gambling and Alex Jones. Some platforms are gateways for predators, and the majority of Gen Zers haven't learned internet safety skills the same way we do (through terrifying videos of cartoon cats sucked into laptops). Cyberbullying is commonplace and anonymity protects the cruelest.

Let's unpack this. Australia introduced online bullying laws in 1995 – before most of us even had access to the internet. It has always been illegal to use it to threaten, harass, stalk, intimidate, or defame someone. And as with any behavior prohibition, people do it anyway, with varying consequences.

The platforms aren't doing much to stop it. In 2022, an American mother sued Meta and Snapchat for “failure to provide adequate safeguards”, which she claimed led to the suicide of her 11-year-old daughter. This case reflects the problematic underpinnings of social media: Assholes like me go online to make friends or viciously gossip about girls who don't like them. Platforms determine and are paralyzed by cultural dynamics. How they are used is quickly reshaped by those who use them, as they adapt the functionality to their particular social media dialect.

Unfortunately, platforms have little obligation to remedy this problem. For example, since Elon Musk's purchase – then decimation – of Twitter/X in 2022, spambots have taken over. There is less adult content in a literal sex shop. In some cases, platforms encourage it. Research shows that YouTube's algorithm, for example, reinforces extremist ideas by promoting videos from “problematic channels.” The problem here is not the age of the users but the deliberate provision of harmful content by the platforms and the government's failure to hold them to account.

But there is another important complexity. There are myriad places where young people can gather online, from Discord servers and WhatsApp groups to fanfiction communities and Buffy the Vampire Slayer forums. The Internet is – always – a place where like-minded people can talk to each other about common interests, find and maintain community (even if some of it is a little weird).

I haven't yet spoken about my concerns for my own children, and the truth is that it's because I don't have many. A study published in Conversation found that while children and parents think age limits could make the Internet safer, young people see it more as something that benefits adults. And sure, their frontal cortices aren't fully developed yet, but what the Internet has always done is empower children.

As an adult, I made sure to stay as informed as possible about the risks. I taught my kids how to identify a scam, explained to them why pornography isn't real life, and asked them not to share their address with anyone. Plus, they grew up with it. Damn, I grew up with it. Just like “millennials” are actually 40 years old, social media has been around for decades.

The general government ban does not allow this nuance. It does not take into account children who live in homes where homosexuality is shamed, or who find respite from domestic violence, or who are simply alone. “Online” and “offline” are not two different places; what we teach and learn about our children will apply to how they behave in every situation in this murky, bionic existence where digital and analog are intertwined. They depend on us for their safety – not by taking away their spaces, but by making them better spaces.