I am lucky. I grew up in the 1980s and 90s, where our free time was spent playing outdoors, taking up a sport like swimming or tennis, reading and not having our mistakes and general teenage stupidities recorded on a camera phone for the whole world to see. For today’s kids, life is much more complicated and its all online.
Technology has been a terrific innovation for children and for learning but the dark side of social media, the pressures to look a certain way, body image issues, cyberbullying, paedophiles and other bad guys in cyber space -- all of this make it a very scary world for today’s teens. Sure we had fashion magazines that glamorised anorexia and wafer thin bodies but today, kids are subjected to relentless images of what is considered “perfection” on social media. It has become far easier for predators to find targets.
Which is why the Australian government’s decision to ban social media for children under 16 has my support. My only worry: how will it be implemented? The move has sparked off a huge debate around the world. Once implemented next year, the ban will prohibit kids under 16 from accessing platforms like Facebook, X, and TikTok.
While it isn’t quite clear how this will work yet, the Australian Prime Minister has essentially laid the onus on social media platforms to take steps to ensure no access to children. Again, the devil lies in the details. How will social media platforms verify the age of users? Right now it is easy to bypass any .