We need to learn more about managing social media and teens

The federal government’s plan to ban teenagers from social media continues to underwhelm and confuse.

When announced earlier this month, the Herald called the policy “vague and unoriginal”: The former because of the lack of detail (extending from the age of children impacted to how the ban would be enforced), the latter because the Coalition had been calling for an under-16s ban for months.

Whatever its parameters, it appears the ban – which Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has promised by the end of this year – will place the onus on social media companies to ensure their users are of age.

Parents of Generation Alpha, children born since 2010, know that parental controls provided by social media and tech companies continue to be inadequate.

School gate conversations and parenting Facebook groups are filled with stories of children using VPNs to get around parental controls or discovering how to disable screen time limits on devices. If the new rules will be simply a matter of users self-reporting their age, it will carry all the legal weight of an “under 10s” stipulation on an RSL club children’s menu.

And this is assuming a social media ban is even the right approach.

Mental health organisations have been concerned about the impact of a ban on young people since it was first floated by the opposition.

Today, new data from the Black Dog Institute reveals how the prohibitive costs of mental health care in Australia are deterring people – particularly young people – from seeking help, and social media is a cost-effective way to reach this age group and direct them to support and services.

Also in today’s Sun-Herald, Mary Ward reports an Australian-first clinical trial of treatments for smartphone and gaming addiction found parents can have some success reducing the impacts of screen use on their child’s wellbeing by enforcing rules that limit internet access on their devices, rather than taking devices away.

The study’s lead researcher, Dr Brad Marshall, head of Sydney’s Screens and Gaming Disorder Clinic, admitted the work was limited by a lack of funding, with parents responding to questionnaires and watching instructional videos because there was not the resources to run the trial in person.

It is disappointing to learn that research into such a key field – a nightly battle in homes across the country, an examination of technology that is truly changing the way we live – is struggling for resources.

Rather than a social media ban, Black Dog and other mental health organisations would rather see social media companies pay a levy to better fund mental health services, and research on the impact – good and bad – of social media use on mental health, particularly for young people.

A ban of any kind is a blunt instrument. That is not to say a social media ban is not the right instrument for improving youth mental health, but Australia must invest in learning more about the problem before dictating its solution.

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