Teenagers pose for a picture while looking at their phones. Ottawa is preparing to propose a ban on social media for children under 16, according to a source familiar with the digital safety bill proposal.Jana Rodenbusch/Reuters
A real-life contemporary horror story can be found in the parenting section of your local bookstore. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness outlines four foundational harms of social media for young people: social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation and addiction. And, the book posits, this travesty has been carried out with the complicity of tech companies who are raking it in on the backs of young people’s mental health. “These companies have rewired childhood and changed human development on an almost unimaginable scale,” writes Jonathan Haidt.
(Maybe the book actually belongs in the true crime section.)
Although its arguments have been strongly critiqued by McGill University’s Kids Play Tech Lab, the book’s fans include Barack Obama (it was one of his 2024 favourites) and Annabel West, whose husband is Premier of South Australia. As Peter Malinauskas recounts it: “She put the book down and said to me, ‘You better bloody do something about this.’”
Ottawa has no choice but to act on teen social media use, minister says
He did. Exactly six months ago, Australia’s ban on social media took effect for users under the age of 16.
My first thought, upon hearing about it, was: good luck with that.
Now, as Canada brings in its own ban, it would be wise to study the Australian experience. The ban has been called a “flop" and its failures have been widely acknowledged.
“I think it’s fairly clear that the model that Australia is trying has not been successful, at least on this generation of kids,” Shaanan Cohney, senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne’s School of Computing and Information Studies, told me this week.
Several reviews suggest high non-compliance rates, including a paper released in April that shows only about one-quarter of 14- and 15-year-olds have stopped using banned platforms. They include social media behemoths such as Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Snapchat – but do not extend to platforms primarily for gaming, such as Roblox, which, if you have young people in your life, you probably know can be extremely addictive.
Dr. Cohney’s research has indicated that about two-thirds of kids would need to be removed from social media for it to be meaningfully effective.
In Australia, the ban followed only a 24-hour consultation period for public feedback. The eSafety commissioner, in charge of all this, promises transparency on evaluations underway. Its most recent data points to a 37-per-cent reduction in people under 16 holding accounts in the first four months. “Pretty good,” Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said in a recent interview. When the Sydney Morning Herald asked whether the ban (Ms. Inman Grant strongly prefers the term “delay”) had been a success, she responded “it depends what your expectations are.”
So, not resounding.
Dr. Cohney says kids are figuring out how to get around the ban, and they’re sharing the information widely with their peers. Parents are also helping their kids find hacks around the law. And, this point broke my heart, it’s often the so-called popular kids who are staying on social media while others are absent. “Rather than solving the bullying problem, it’s actually exacerbating it,” he told me.
Another unintended consequence is reported in a new study out of Western Sydney University: that teens, who often rely on social media for news, are seeing less of it because of the ban. Further, the study’s lead author Tanya Notley told me, many young people who are still using the banned platforms no longer feel able to discuss their experiences with parents or teachers.
Still, we can’t just throw our hands up and leave this to the gods. The problem requires action. In his book, Prof. Haidt recommends four basic points to undo this “catastrophic” rewiring: no smartphones before high school, no social media before 16, phone-free schools and more unsupervised play and childhood independence.
Opinion: Banning kids from social media sounds like common sense. The evidence says otherwise
As for the school bans, for them to work, the phones need to be securely put away during class – not just in students’ backpacks. (This is purely anecdotal, but when I asked my son how the phone ban was going at his high school, he said, “You mean the ‘ban’?” – putting air quotes around the word “ban.”)
Dr. Cohney points out that while the Australian ban has not so far been effective, that could change for future generations. They will be raised in a different climate, rather than suddenly having their worlds changed on an arbitrary date.
As for Canada, Prof. Notley’s advice: “I would advise other governments to pause and wait for more evidence to emerge from Australia before implementing similar social media age restrictions.”
We are going to need more than good luck with this.