The Prime Min­is­ter has an­nounced Gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tion to ban so­cial me­dia use for chil­dren 12 and un­der. This an­nounce­ment has been met with sup­port and crit­i­cism. I am not ful­ly in sup­port. I whole­heart­ed­ly sup­port a ban on so­cial me­dia us­age for mi­nors; how­ev­er, I be­lieve we should con­sid­er an age group high­er than 12, in fact, per­haps ex­tend it to 15. I ap­pre­ci­ate that some par­ents be­lieve this in­fringes on their par­ent­ing rights. But, we will all ap­pre­ci­ate that not all par­ents are made equal.

If all par­ents were made equal, then we cer­tain­ly wouldn’t need leg­is­la­tion which man­dates that chil­dren of a cer­tain age be re­quired to at­tend school. We would ex­pect that par­ents aware of the im­por­tance of a prop­er ed­u­ca­tion would sim­ply send their chil­dren to school.

Imag­ine, even with the ex­is­tence of leg­is­la­tion, some chil­dren still do not at­tend school. If all par­ents were made equal in their par­ent­ing, we could have avoid­ed leg­is­la­tion which pro­vides that chil­dren can­not be made to beg or mi­nors can­not con­sume al­co­hol or use to­bac­co prod­ucts.

Imag­ine we have leg­is­la­tion con­cern­ing ba­sic rights that chil­dren should have, yet, we live in a coun­try where many chil­dren do not en­joy these rights due to some fault of their par­ents or guardians. For­give me if I be­lieve that in some in­stances leg­is­la­tion is re­quired to par­ent chil­dren.

While par­ents may have rights in par­ent­ing their chil­dren, chil­dren al­so have rights. The UN Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child is clear in di­rect­ing that in all ac­tions con­cern­ing chil­dren, the in­ter­ests and wel­fare of the child are para­mount.

Giv­en my in­volve­ment with young chil­dren and teenagers in the clubs and groups which I at­tend, I have learnt more than I wish to. There are many par­ents who have sworn that their chil­dren do not have a so­cial me­dia pres­ence. These are par­ents who mon­i­tor their chil­dren’s de­vices, whose par­ent­ing skills ap­pear to be above re­proach and whose chil­dren ap­pear to be well-bal­anced.

I re­cent­ly dis­cov­ered that so­cial me­dia apps can be hid­den on phones and these chil­dren do have a so­cial me­dia pres­ence un­known to their par­ents. I learnt this on­ly af­ter it was dis­cov­ered that one of these chil­dren be­gan post­ing se­mi-nude pho­tographs of her­self and an­oth­er be­gan post­ing pho­tographs cut­ting her in­ner thigh. A mem­ber of their so­cial group, who hap­pened to be on their “hid­den” so­cial me­dia ac­count, be­came so con­cerned and dis­turbed that it was re­port­ed to adult lead­ers in our group.

Imag­ine the shock and hor­ror ex­pe­ri­enced by these par­ents who swore their chil­dren had no so­cial me­dia ac­counts af­ter view­ing their chil­dren’s posts. The posts in ques­tion were for likes, shares, pop­u­lar­i­ty and to gain at­ten­tion. The se­mi-nude pho­tographs, though it could clear­ly be seen from the ac­count were those of a child, gained con­sid­er­able mo­men­tum from men. Chil­dren are not af­ford­ed any spe­cial pro­tec­tion on so­cial me­dia.

Chil­dren are wis­er than we think and smarter than we be­lieve when it comes to the art of de­cep­tion. They can hood­wink adults. They can sit in front of adults and par­ents and pre­tend to be the mod­el child, all the while act­ing dif­fer­ent­ly when with their peers, hav­ing se­cret so­cial me­dia ac­counts, with se­cret re­la­tion­ships in school which no one, save for their best friends, are aware of.

As much as we be­lieve as par­ents, we are mon­i­tor­ing and aware, the truth is we on­ly know what our chil­dren want us to know. It is on­ly when it all blows up in the worst way, then, and on­ly then, as par­ents, we know the truth of their ac­tions.

In No­vem­ber 2024, Aus­tralia cre­at­ed his­to­ry when its Par­lia­ment passed what was deemed as the ‘world’s strictest law’. The leg­is­la­tion banned so­cial me­dia use for chil­dren un­der the age of 16.

While there were many who op­posed the po­si­tion adopt­ed by Aus­tralia and sought to crit­i­cise the lo­gis­tics of im­ple­ment­ing the ban, the Aus­tralian Prime Min­is­ter jus­ti­fied the move as one which was need­ed to pro­tect young peo­ple from the harms of so­cial me­dia. This so­cial me­dia ban does not af­fect What­sApp. Aus­tralia has al­so gone for­ward to lev­el high fines on any plat­form that fails to take rea­son­able steps to ex­clude users un­der 16.

While to date no oth­er coun­try has im­ple­ment­ed a ban that mir­rors Aus­tralia, the Unit­ed King­dom has passed the On­line Safe­ty Act 2023, which man­dates par­tic­u­lar age re­stric­tions for so­cial me­dia plat­forms and stricter stan­dards. Nor­way cur­rent­ly has an age re­stric­tion capped at 13 for so­cial me­dia us­age but has ex­pressed its in­ten­tion to in­crease the age to 15. France, Den­mark and New Zealand are cur­rent­ly con­sid­er­ing their own so­cial me­dia ban on chil­dren.

I un­der­stand and ap­pre­ci­ate the var­i­ous ad­vo­ca­cy groups call­ing for the de­vel­op­ment of healthy re­la­tion­ships be­tween par­ents and chil­dren, where it is be­lieved this can as­sist in how chil­dren ap­proach so­cial me­dia. I al­so ap­pre­ci­ate that there are groups that gen­uine­ly be­lieve par­ents can prop­er­ly mon­i­tor their chil­dren’s ac­tiv­i­ties. Re­spect­ful­ly, the par­ents who are ca­pa­ble of any such thing will be in the mi­nor­i­ty.

We need to weigh the abil­i­ty to prop­er­ly pro­tect our chil­dren ver­sus the abil­i­ty of par­ents to prop­er­ly mon­i­tor. At present, it does not ap­pear that our chil­dren are prop­er­ly pro­tect­ed from the var­i­ous short­com­ings of so­cial me­dia; worse yet, the posts of adults make you won­der whether adults un­der­stand the prop­er use of so­cial me­dia and the im­pli­ca­tions of their own ac­tions.