Trigger warning: suicidal ideation and self harm
I grew up on the internet and if you’re reading this, you likely did too, in some shape or form.
Whether it be your workforce and life revolutionising in your 40s with the arrival of dial-up, or the childhood amusement of sending gifts on Farmville – the advent of digital technology has revolutionised our world and there is no going back.
However, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese believes we can.
Yesterday, Albanese announced the government’s plan to ban social media use by teenagers under the age of 16. And just this morning, the seven state and territory leaders came together in a national cabinet meeting signing off on the ‘world-first’ measure.
A measure that removes a key third space and community environment where youth often have none.
I grew up in the Wild West of social media before it became the social media we know and love or hate today.
From the chatrooms of MSN as a naive 10-year-old, to lying about my age in order to create a Facebook account at 12, there was a hungry desire to feel connected in a world where I wasn’t.
I was and am a proud immigrant child, but that also meant that I did not feel that I belonged in any of the physical spaces that I was placed into in my adolescence.
From villages in India to small towns in Australia, to cities in the Midwest and then back to rural Queensland, the world was big and bright and offered so much – but if you were caught in a street where you were the only one with a curry box, you had nowhere to run.
Expect the safety of an online world where there were others with the same tear-stricken faces.
I could and I will go on and on for years about all the positive and negative experiences I had with the community that I found online. From friends that I made on blogging and gaming sites who lived timezones away, but flew across the globe to visit me.
Or the ones who put me in such a dark place as a 15-year-old that I felt I had no place left to go. Social media does just as much harm as it does good.
That’s the problem.
Outwardly banning the most prominent and accessible mode of education, communication and community to young Australians is not the answer.
Social media harms kids, just as it harms adults, and there is a growing evidence that shows the rise in mental health conditions over the years due to the increasing amount of time we are all spending on social platforms.
Children also have a right to be online under the UN General Comment No. 25 which takes the Articles listed in the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and applies them to the digital environment.
These rights include:
- children’s right to access and share information (Article 13)
- the right to meet and interact with other children and young people (Article 15)
- the right to privacy, even from their families (Article 16)
- the right to access ‘reliable information from the media’ (Article 17)
- and the right to relax, play and participate in leisure activities (Article 31).
And although social media was not initially or inherently designed with children’s best interests in mind, these online spaces still afford many children and young people a means to exercise these rights. And thus the onus is on the digital platforms and the education system to fully prepare children for the world because the internet is not going anywhere.
Organisations such as ALLKND, who deliver a FREE preventative mental health first aid certificate, The Butterfly Foundation, the national charity for eating disorders, Project Rockit, Australia’s youth-driven movement against bullying, hate and prejudice have shared that cutting young people off from communities and mental health support will do more harm than good.
Social media is often used as the first step to mental health resources and other support systems in Australia, removing this accessible and free tool will gravely hinder the development of youth.
As someone who grew up on the internet, saw and lived through the good and the bad, and then went on to work to help create resources that empower and assist youth with their mental health, it is clear that a hard and fast ban takes away agency from our future generations.
Social media is not going away. Whether we are 14, 16, 28, or 98. We need to learn and develop systems to live with and in the digital world safely, prohibition will not help anyone.