‘Zombies’: Dangerous effects of social media and smartphones on Aussie kids
Young Australians are at the coalface of risks nobody understands, and dangerous behaviours now considered normal are turning them into “zombies”.
“To say kids are at the coalface of risks we don’t really understand is a massive understatement,” says Nara* a mother from the Gold Coast, who describes her 15-year-old daughter as a “phone zombie”.
“I don’t know what’s normal teen apathy and what’s an addiction to her phone that drives out what I would consider ‘normal’ teen behaviour. She has friends, but they rarely hang out in person. She has anxiety, and has been through periods of deep depression. Our efforts to curb the phone and app use is met with outrage, and to be honest I wish we’d never let her get a smartphone at all.”
Nara, who spoke under the condition of anonymity due to what she calls “extreme parental judgement” around the issue, says it’s something a lot of parents in her cohort are experiencing: a deep sense of failure over their children’s obsession with phones and social media, coupled with a sense of the horse having bolted in terms of their ability to rein it back in.
Australia is in the grips of a mental health crisis, and people are struggling to know who to turn to, especially our younger generations. Can We Talk? is a News Corp awareness campaign, in partnership with Medibank, equipping Aussies with the skills needed to have the most important conversation of their life.
It’s a sentiment echoed in the research.
In The Anxious Generation, American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt delivers a stark cultural diagnosis: childhood has been rewired by the smartphone.
He traces an epidemic of anxiety, depression and loneliness among young people to the early 2010s, when glowing screens replaced playgrounds and face-to-face adventures. Haidt argues that a “phone-based childhood” robs kids of resilience, sleep and social depth, fuelling fragile mental health.
Closer to home, the research is also ringing alarm bells.
According to research from News Corp’s Growth Distillery with Medibank, Gen Z (the youngest cohort included) are the least confident in managing their mental wellbeing.
The report showed social media in particular fuels daily stress, with almost a third of Gen Z reporting negative impacts from extensive social media use, which includes doom scrolling and comparing themselves to others, leading to increased daily stress and anxiety.
One in three (28 per cent) parents of 16-30 year olds say they have never had a conversation about their own mental wellbeing with their children, while both parents and children find it hard to open up about mental health challenges with each other.
‘Anxiety is the norm, not the exception’
“Research tells us that we are seeing a rise in symptomology and there is an increase in self-diagnosis with young people,” explains psychologist Maria Ruberto, who is the founder and director of Salutegenics Psychology and member of the Medibank Mental Health Reference Group.
“It appears that anxiety is the norm, not the exception, with psychological distress at 42.3 per cent for 15 to 24 year olds, up from 18.4 per cent in 2011, a significant difference.
“The ABS is showing that a diagnosable disorder is common in late adolescence. From 2020 to 2022, 38.8 per cent of 16-24 year olds met criteria for a 12-month mental disorder.”
For Haidt, the prescription is simple: delay smartphones and social media, revive free play, and anchor adolescence in the real world.
Ms Ruberto takes a slightly more nuanced approach.
“(Haidt) is compelling on timing and on the developmental logic,” she said. “Adolescence is a sensitive time (due to synaptogenesis and vulnerability to neural mapping) for social evaluation, sleep loss and reward loops.
“Where I’m cautious is causality. High-quality studies typically show small average effects, with bigger risks clustered in subgroups and specific online experiences. In practice, I look less at “minutes” and more at function: does phone use displace sleep, crowd out offline friendships, or become compulsive?
“When it does, we see more anxiety, low mood, and attentional dysregulation, and dialling back phones, restoring sleep, and rebuilding real-world connection helps.”
The topic of youth mental health as a direct result of social media in particular has evoked a crisis response at a federal level: last year amendments were passed to the Online Safety Act (2021) that ban social media for Australian children under the age of 16.
The ban, which comes into effect in December of this year, is one of the most bullish global responses, though governments in France, the UK, Norway and Brazil have made similar amendments to their laws requiring stricter age verification from social media platforms.
But for parents whose children are already deeply embedded in social media and online spaces, Ruberto says that while bans may be effective, compromise can also go a long way in moving the needle.
“What gives me hope is the current focus being constructed by the adults and systems that are working toward a priority of care in this changing landscape of online existence with our young people,” she says.
“Professional guidance is now moving toward ‘how’ to be online, not ‘how much’. Psychological boards are writing social codes on the benefits of content-coaching, practical steps on privacy protection and age-appropriate online use.
“First and foremost, self-care for the parent is crucial, and being connected to an informed and protective network of adults and professionals will scaffold your efforts and goals with your child. Don’t make it a war, as no-one wins when conflict is high. Instead, co-create a design with meaning.
“Explain that your intention is not to take away devices, but to have devices not take them away.”
Advocating for a more holistic look at what might be troubling our teens, Ruberto also points to shifting the way we look at mental health as a whole.
“What worries me most is the earlier onset of symptoms, and the deficit lexicon we employ to explain young people’s internal experiences, which often are not symptoms, but the varying and very natural experiences of life’s real challenges,” she says.
“Challenges like spiking dysregulation, intense flooding of the nervous system, the overwhelm of thought to loss of function. (These) might actually be a very reasonable response to real life situations like learning difficulties, social bumps, compromised home lives, poverty, illnesses, financial strains … it’s not what is wrong with you, it’s what’s happening to you.”
Instead of this ‘deficit lexicon’, Ruberto advises parents and health professionals “inquire with compassion, find something that is working and reorientate to strengths. Not because it fixes the issue, but because it provides the remapping required for alternative options and possibilities.”
Because, explains the psychologist, the news is not actually all bad.
“Teens who view social media with a purpose and link it to their values, and who have well developed social emotional competencies where self-regulation is a key moderator, appear to be best protected in their overall mental health,” she suggests, reinforcing that how kids use social media is much more impactful than how much.
“I’m optimistic about young people’s future around social media,” Ms Ruberto continues, “Because adolescents have extraordinary capacity to contribute. We’ve seen youth mobilise at speed - organising, creating, and caring - often before adults have found the mute button (that’s me!)
“With better defaults (phone-light schools, private-by-default accounts), sleep-first routines at home, and steady coaching in digital citizenship, that same energy shifts from comparison to contribution. Add a clear structure around device bedtimes, phone-free classrooms, and skills for handling algorithms, conflict, and social comparison, and their online worlds move from risk-heavy to growth-ready. The goal isn’t less life online; it’s more life, well lived, on and off the screen.”
Originally published as ‘Zombies’: Dangerous effects of social media and smartphones on Aussie kids
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