Australia is mightily unimpressed by the negativity about the social media ban. Musk, after all, is the guy who shredded the world’s top social media platform. Others focus on their own interests, not the public interest, and do nothing about child safety themselves.
Nor is the kid side of the problem getting much traction or even interest in the world’s sycophantic media. What, are they handing out Pulitzers for groveling these days? It looks like it.
Some parents have already taken steps to get their kids off social media. Has everybody forgotten the decades of suicides, grooming incidents, bullying, and other issues?
Are grade-schoolers supposed to “manage” the insanity all on their own?
Let’s spell it out for you with the degree of sensitivity the subject requires:
Under Australian law, a person under 16 is legally a minor. That’s it. Game over.
There’s also a bit of a cultural divide here.
In Australia, kids aren’t routinely used for target practice.
We know you do it differently over there, but we’d prefer if they weren’t targets for psychopathic nutcases in other ways, too.
Online bullying in particular is a critical issue. It’s highly stressful, often dangerous, and the online world spills over into the real world. You know, the sort of disasters you’ve been reading about for decades, that sort of thing?
There’s another point to be made here. Social media platforms are not law enforcement agencies. A lot of the hostile stuff online is actually illegal, like harassment, stalking, child porn, etc., and highly dangerous in some cases. You can’t really expect the social media platforms to form SWAT teams and hand out prosecutions.
We also can’t expect platforms that are so incredibly slack with their content and conduct rules to really do much about protecting kids.
It’s academic now, anyway. The law went through Parliament with bipartisan support and enforcement starts in a year.
The practical issues of the social media ban are actually far more challenging. “Someone who does nothing about their own problems doesn’t like our laws” does not and will not cut any ice at all:
Will it work? We hope so. The ban was researched tested in control groups and being offline was found to reduce stress.
How will it work? Whether or not it works administratively we have yet to see. If it’s too clunky or ID issues need tweaking, that will need fixing.
Was doing nothing an option? No. We had our versions of what’s been happening worldwide. The difference is we decided to do something about it.
Will they go on to dangerous sites or the dark web if locked out of social media? They could do that now. The ban doesn’t somehow make the rest of the internet any safer. Nor do the people complaining about the ban.
Meanwhile, world, what are you doing about protecting your kids?
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
