A social media ban encompassing children and younger teens in Australia brought up a serious question societies have been facing for years but somehow choose to neglect. Should young kids have uninterrupted access to social media platforms and how can we tackle certain harms platforms pose?
This year marked the 20th anniversary since Facebook entered our lives and forever changed the course of how we interact with each other, exchange views, share important dates and in the end, basically interact on a daily basis.
This platform grew rapidly as users became intrigued with sharing the photos on their timelines, playing FarmVille and much more. Many more platforms followed, and their user bases were expanding equally fast.
In recent years we got TikTok, Threads and before that Snapchat and Instagram. But what once looked like a simple way to connect soon emerged as something much larger. These platforms became a web for content creators and in some cases predators alike. While many rely on content creation to earn a living, concerns about other social media aspects persist.
What struck me the most, in addition to bizarre examples of personal identities being stolen or people being swindled, was an investigative story shared by The New York Times earlier this year: "A Marketplace of Girl Influencers Managed by Moms and Stalked by Men." It offered an in-depth story showing the importance and role of parents in ensuring or at least trying to ensure their children's online safety.
"Over the years, Elissa has fielded all kinds of criticism and knows full well that some people think she is exploiting her daughter," the article said, detailing the experience and story of a mom running a modeling account for her young daughter.
I instantly remembered it when considering a more pressing issue: children's safety on the web. The ban on under-16s using social media starting in 2025 recently adopted by the Australian Parliament brought even more focus to this complex issue.
While authorities should step in instances when public safety comes into question, I think this issue has a broader correlation with how fast certain technologies proliferate and the new norm of having and using smartphones. Thus, people tend to linger on big platforms like X, Facebook and Instagram. And of course, there is a role of families in this as well.
Just a couple of days ago I read about the concept of "containment" in technology and the more I think of the bans on social media, I go back to it.
What if it would be possible to predict certain harmful impacts of technology, in this case, social media and apps, and work on issues before they become widespread?
Internet access is surely a blessing and social media, although in some cases disruptive, is also a major force that makes our work easier, helps us broaden our horizons, remain in touch with relatives and friends living miles away, and so on.
But specifically when it comes to kids and their safety, that is where red flags pop up.
Quite naive and very young, children adapt to online space, video games and long stints in front of the screen, which according to many studies are proven to have adverse effects on eyesight and posture but also often result in a lack of real-life connections.
Compare the kids from the '90s and those from Generation Alpha and you will easily spot the difference. While families and monitoring also play a decisive role, the fact is that children born in 2020 will naturally have closer ties to readily available technology, especially social media, than those born some five decades before them.
The kids of the newer generation are born to parents who have used the internet and social media for the larger part of their lives, and this is a new standard. Yet, how we decide to introduce certain things to these children, including social media, and at what pace stays broadly our personal decision.
Nevertheless, surroundings and friends at times also play a role in introducing kids to Instagram, TikTok, Roblox and YouTube, whether we like it or not. That is where regulation and countermeasures start to make sense.
Although in my opinion, it is a bit unclear how you could enforce a straight ban on a kid who is already 13 or 14, some measures such as parental device monitoring can play a key role and work to at least partly minimize the potential negative impacts.
Evaluating media literacy, a report by the U.K.-based communications regulator Ofcom in April this year found that "five-to-seven-year-olds are becoming increasingly present online," which it said may pose "greater risks for them."
"Children this age are also more likely to use WhatsApp (37% vs 29%), TikTok (30% vs 25%), Instagram (22% vs 14%), and Discord (4% vs 2%) compared to last year," the report said.
On the other hand, new data from the WHO Regional Office for Europe cited in September "a sharp rise in problematic social media use among adolescents, with rates increasing from 7% in 2018 to 11% in 2022."
The report defined problematic social media use as a pattern of behavior characterized with addiction-like symptoms. "These include an inability to control social media usage, experiencing withdrawal when not using it, neglecting other activities in favor of social media," it said.
However, the debate on the risks of social media is much broader.
Ministers in Sweden's government are considering imposing age limits on social media platforms if tech companies find themselves unable to prevent gangs from recruiting young people online to "carry out murders and bombings in the Nordics," Reuters reported on Monday. Gang violence and high crime rates per capita have been an issue for this Northern European country for some time now, yet it appears that police and authorities have identified the role of social media in it as well.
Social media's effect on other aspects of daily life also comes to the fore. Consider the word "brain-rot" we've been hearing about a lot this last week.
"Brain rot" is the official Word of the Year for 2024, according to the Oxford English Dictionary’s publisher, Oxford University Press.
It is defined as the "supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state," resulting from the “overconsumption” of trivial material, especially stuff found on the internet and social media. It is the result of mindless scrolling on social media. This word spiked in popularity this year, pointing to yet another danger of the virtual environment.
Currently at a crossroads and facing uncertain times amid many geopolitical fluctuations and the rapid proliferation of other technologies such as AI, social media should not be our primary focus and source of external contact. We should push ourselves and those younger than us that there is a world outside of it – no matter how hard that might seem.
