Culturally diverse teens benefit greatly from social media – banning it would be harmful

There is currently bipartisan pressure from state and federal governments to introduce laws in Australia banning young people under the age of 16 from accessing social media platforms. Politicians are concerned that minors may be exposed to harmful or inappropriate content online.

The proposed reform was accompanied by federal government plans to test “old age guarantee” technologies. Tools offered for age verification range from uploading identity documents to using biometric facial scanning technologies. Most of these methods pose many problems, including privacy risks.

Overseas research has already raised concerns about the potential harms of introducing a social media ban. Australian research has also highlighted how social media is essential to young people's fundamental rights to access information and participate in society.

However, less attention has been paid to the impacts this ban could have on some of the most marginalized youth in the community.

We conducted research with culturally diverse young people (aged 13-18), educators and policy makers in New South Wales and Victoria. In our next study, we found that young people who have emigrated to Australia – or were born to parents or grandparents who have done so – are proficient users of social media.

They use social media platforms to connect to culture and community, to speak out on issues that matter to them, and to combat digital and social harm.

Like the debates surrounding social media bans, our research also revealed a gap between how culturally diverse adults and young people view the role digital and social media play in young people's lives. There are also differences of opinion on how to create safer online environments.

What do young people think about it?

In our research, educators and policymakers believed that young people in certain communities were at greater risk of social harm from accessing inappropriate content. Therefore, these adults are advocating for more parental controls and limits on social media use.

At the same time, the young people in our study say that social networks allow them to assume responsibilities that go beyond personal safety.

These include:

• connect with family and friends, locally and abroad
• discover their own culture and that of others, and learn about the world and their roles and responsibilities within it
• engage in activism and advocacy to combat systemic hatred and racism experienced in their daily lives, and
• defuse toxic online cultures through participation and moderation of digital communities and fandoms.

As one participant told us:

As young people we realize that we also have beliefs and things, we must share them. […] because, obviously, adults can do it by voting.

Others spoke of the privilege young Australians have to speak out on social issues and challenge government policies. They compared this to countries where media, including social media, are censored or banned by the state.

This is also a point that speaks to some of the dangers of banning social media for this age group:

I think it's important that Australian citizens are aware and protest against this sort of thing. […] because they are a free country and they have access to information […] I feel like if you had this access, you should […] raise awareness among people who […] I don't have the same opportunity.

Online socializing is not always public

Rather than always being public and loud on social media, young people have also participated in more discreet and less public acts. These focused on finding information and creating supportive communities through moderation and respectful dialogue. One participant said:

There was a certain person in the Discord [online messaging platform with individual communities] on which I moderate, which is the one that my friends and I created, which […] It wasn't necessarily things he did on Discord, but in person he did some pretty gross things. So we kind of ended up cutting him and banning him from Discords and group chats and stuff like that.

This last point is important given that, in the current debate, politicians seem to view youth safety as dependent on political, legal and electoral intervention.

This deprives young people from diverse cultures of their agency. It also ignores their abilities and skillful navigation of social media.

In our study, young people demonstrated a sense of social responsibility to raise their voices against collective harm and to acquire the tools and skills needed to defuse toxic online cultures. By denying them access to social media, these skills are lost.

This shows that we need to go beyond seeing social media as a source of harm to young people. Instead, we argue that age-based social media bans would result in unintended consequences and harms, such as the removal of diverse voices critical to achieving and building safer digital communities and societies.

Read more: Age verification on social media would impact us all. We asked parents and children if they really wanted it