Editorial: Today we take back our kids’ childhood from Big Tech

Kids these days have no escape from toxic behaviour. If you remain a skeptic on this ban, please just take a moment to properly consider that, writes the editor.

Today is the day the world reboots childhood. Today is the day that Australian kids will be banned from using social media until they turn 16 – in the same way they are banned from drinking alcohol or driving a car, to prevent them from harm.

Australia is the first country in the world to impose such a ban. It will definitely not be the last. Expect an under-16 ban to be very much the norm across the globe within five years. Fast-forward perhaps 15 years and we will all be wondering why we ever allowed kids to be on social media in the first place.

Lives will be changed by these new laws. Lives will be saved. They unshackle our kids from a world they are not old enough to handle and frees them to be able to once again grow up in a society that protects them; where they have safe places to escape the name-calling and bullying that – sadly – has always been a part of growing up.

This move has its many critics. Of course it does. Its biggest critics are of course those tech companies who will lose making our kids addicts to their products. But here is the very real truth: they do not give a stuff about the impact their products have had on a generation of kids.

They have shown this by being totally unwilling to do anything to address these issues despite all the evidence of mental illness, suicides and sextortion soaring since the very year social media became mainstream. The facts are the facts.

The social media companies have not acted because they care only about their profits – but they have been profiting from anguish.

Fortunately, those opposed to these necessary law changes are in the minority. We know from every reputable poll that this change is welcomed by the vast majority of parents.

That is because they know the harm social media is doing. But they have felt helpless. Making it illegal for their under-16s to have a social media account gives them the justification that parents for the past decade and a half have been crying out for. They can now tell their kids that no, you can’t – because, like driving and drinking, it is illegal until you reach a certain age.

That does not mean all kids will stop. They will find ways around this ban – just as teens have always found ways to drink alcohol and maybe take the car for a sneaky spin when their parents are away.

But they will now do so knowing it is against the law. And that acts as a brake on that behaviour. So it will be with social media use.

Communications Minister Anika Wells (left) and eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant

Why is this so important? When most of the readers of this column went to school they knew that no matter what was happening to them at school could be left behind at the school gate, or at least after they hopped off the bus. Through the expectation today that they are all on social media, that bullying now follows them home – into the loungeroom and the bedroom, late into the night; and when they wake up in the morning.

Kids these days have no escape. And if you remain a skeptic on this ban, please just take a moment to properly consider that: think back to the worst moment you ever had at school. Imagine an image of that moment being shared to all your friends, and hundreds – perhaps thousands – of kids you do not even know. Imagine that. Imagine that the bully who made your life hell in year eight could taunt you all night – and in front of everyone at school.

Please, just be honest with that thought for a moment.

Welcome to childhood in 2025.

Until today. Today, the adults of the world finally start to say no.

Courageous parents of victims who have taken their own lives, brave journalists who have told those stories and campaigned for change, and a lionhearted Prime Minister have joined forces to successfully fight back.

They have done so taking on the world’s biggest-ever corporations. It is surely not a coincidence that the very questionable use of taxpayer-funded benefits by the Minister responsible for these new laws have been raised in public this week. The timing is obvious: to undermine what should have been minister Anika Wells’s proudest moment.

We absolutely think the Minister has some explaining to do – as we said here yesterday. But that should not in any way downplay the truly extraordinary role she has played in fearlessly backing these laws.

The Courier-Mail and our sister publications across the nation led this campaign – in public and in private, under the banner Let Them Be Kids. The Prime Minister has repeatedly acknowledged that this would not have happened without our campaign. We will forever be proud of it, and we will never shy away from saying so.

In a generation from now, there will not be a child in Australia who will consider it their right to have a social media account. The result will be a return to the lives that we all led as kids – ones that have their own host of challenges, but ones without the dangers that come with social media use.

We say on our front page every single day that “we’re for you”. It is not a marketing slogan, it is instead what we genuinely believe. It is why we do what we do. We are for YOU.

Social media harms our children. Today is the day that all starts to end. Today, our society hits reset as we agree to just let them be kids.

Responsibility for election comment is taken by Chris Jones, corner of Mayne Rd & Campbell St, Bowen Hills, Qld 4006. Printed and published by NEWSQUEENSLAND (ACN 009 661 778). Contact details here