Social media has wiped out creative pursuits for a generation, new research reveals

Shocking new research shows social media has corrupted an entire generation of Australian children, with artistic participation plummeting by 200 per cent. Those who had never read for fun surged from 11 to 53 per cent.

The University of South Australia research provides crucial baseline data showing that the rise of social media came at a direct and permanent cost to intellectual and creative or ‘enriching’ pursuits.

Social media has dumbed down almost an entire generation of Australian children, with new longitudinal research revealing how time spent scrolling on screens has corrupted intellectual and creative pursuits.

The Australian government has launched its world-first ban on children under the age of 16 accessing social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat. While the move attracted criticism from the tech giants, saying it risked pushing children into darker corners of the internet, a study from the University of South Australia appears to have vindicated its intent.

The research tracked more 14,000 South Australian children from 2019 to 2022. It found that daily social media use among adolescents aged 11 to 14 surged by more than 200 per cent over the four years leading up to 2022.

This habit persisted even after pandemic restrictions ended, demonstrating a fundamental, entrenched shift in behaviour that directly competes with developmental activities. The research provides crucial baseline data showing that the rise of social media came at a direct and permanent cost to intellectual and creative or “enriching” pursuits.

Those who had never read for fun surged from 11 to 53 per cent. Similarly, those who never took part in artistic activities soared from 26 to 70 per cent. Those who never participated in extra-curricular music leapt from 26 to 70 per cent.

These declines, unlike the temporary pandemic spikes in television viewing or electronic gaming, have not returned to pre-pandemic levels. Social media was the singular activity to demonstrate consistent, sustained growth, confirming its role as a pervasive distraction that has displaced essential formative activities.

The findings counter arguments the ban is an overreach, and support advocates who say it is a necessary public health intervention.

Mi Zhou, a researcher at the University of South Australia who co-authored the paper, said: “There’s no doubt that social media has become deeply embedded in children’s daily lives.

“But now it’s at the point where it’s replacing many of the activities that support healthy development — like sport, reading, and creative play,” Mr Zhou said.

The research found that this trend reflects a systematic shift in after-school activity patterns “from internally driven to externally driven”. Activities typically fuelled by intrinsic motivation — the internal desire to create, learn, or explore, such as music, art, and reading — saw steep declines.

In contrast, activities like household chores, often driven by external motivation, remained stable. The study’s authors warn that this displacement by digital habits could limit opportunities for creativity, autonomy, and personal growth.

In this context, the government’s world-first ban on social media accounts for children under 16 assumes a greater significance as a measure to create the necessary space for children to return to healthier pursuits.

By enforcing an age restriction, the policy hopes young people will reconnect with the physical and creative world.

But this challenge is not without its complications. Critics of the ban point to the immediate and widespread defiance from teenagers, who have turned to easily executed workarounds.

Teenagers are openly discussing tactics in online forums, including using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to mask their location, lying about their age during sign-up, and sharing viral tips on using makeup and head angles to pass biometric age verification.

But Louis Hourany, course director and lecturer in information technology at Charles Sturt University, warned that such workarounds are often not the silver bullet users believe. Mr Hourany cautioned that under-16s and their parents often think a VPN can hide a connection’s origin, but they “don’t understand that it does not make a user anonymous to platforms that analyse device data, behaviour and account history”.

Major social platforms already maintain extensive blocklists of commercial VPN exit nodes, and VPN usage leaves identifiable patterns in metadata, including shared IP space and predictable routing paths.

Platforms now correlate multiple signals to detect users, not just geolocation, and also use behavioural analytics and machine-learning models to detect patterns that do not align with historical usage.

“Parents often assume VPN equals privacy,” Mr Hourany said. “But in some cases, the operator of the VPN may see far more than the social media platform ever could.”

The ban has also spurred a chaotic migration to smaller, unregulated apps like Lemon8, Yope, and Coverstar, reflecting concerns that the policy is inadvertently pushing minors into less-moderated online spaces. Professor Tama Leaver of Curtin University warned that by restricting known platforms, the ban “may well expose them to high levels of harm rather than reducing it”.

But proponents of the ban and the University of Adelaide’s research’s findings suggest that even the threat of restriction — and the ensuing debate — validates the need for a national intervention. The long-term consequences highlighted by the research, including the chronic decline in reading and arts participation, underscore public health unease.

“If we want to support young people’s wellbeing, we need to help them rebalance their time — encouraging them to reconnect with real-world activities that build skills, confidence and social connection,” said co-researcher Professor Dorothea Dumuid.