THERE are many things about social media that are neither social nor media. Don’t be duped. Far too many adults believe that whatever they see on social media platforms – Instagram, X, Snapchat – has got to have some truth to it. And most times, there is always a sliver of truth in a pile of lies. But where does this leave teenagers trying to navigate a combustible mix of truth and lies? Are parents and teachers at fault when things go awry?

The Australian government is holding Big Tech companies such as Facebook owner Meta and TikTok are responsible. The recent passage of the Social Media Minimum Age bill will force the big companies to adopt measures to block children under the age of 16 from logging on to their social media platforms.

The country’s eSafety Commissioner – we need one in Guyana – will work closely with owners of social media platforms during a 12-months implementation process of the new legislation. Companies that don’t comply with the law could face stiff fines of up to US$32M.
France and a few states in the United States have laws that restrict access to social media for minors without a parent’s permission, but Australia’s ban is absolute.

Australia is one of the few countries that forces tech companies to pay mainstream media organisations royalties for sharing their content online and it threatens the Big Techs with fines if they don’t do more to weed out pesky online scams.
Amidst the wailing of free speech groups, a poll found that 77 per cent of Australians wanted the bill to be passed. Parents applauded it, but surprisingly, child rights groups opposed its passage. In 2023, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy boldly declared that social media was making youth mental health crises worse to the point where it should come with a health warning, much like a person will find stamped on a pack of cigarettes.

Prior to the passage of the bill, an Australian parliamentary inquiry heard evidence from many tearful parents who talked about losing their children after they were subjected to severe forms of bullying on social media. One father said he felt helpless when the light began to dim on his teenage son, who was suffering from anorexia nervosa.

At the age of 13, his son started spending a great deal of time on social media and the content he was consuming fuelled his insecurities about his body and self-worth. Young boys on social media bullied him and told him to end his life. Tragically, he did.
One mother talked about how she was able to install controls on her child’s phone, but her tech savvy son was able to circumvent them. A teacher testified that home wasn’t the safe space parents thought it was. An online user with ill intent can easily invade a home and cause irreparable harm to a family.

A mother testified that her teenage daughter tried 11 times to take her life and failed. Eventually, she succeeded. It came after a teenage boy had shared a fake nude photo purported to be her. He shared the photo at 3pm while on a bus, and an hour later, 600 young people from her school had received it. The girl’s mother complained to the police, who didn’t intervene. The principal of her daughter’s school couldn’t either.

Parents revealed how even they used to think of social media as a product, but when tragedy visited their homes, they began to realise that their children were in fact the products. Parents explained how teenagers struggling with mental health might use Google to search for information on depression and anxiety, but because of the platform’s algorithms, they would begin receiving information on their social media feed on effective suicide methods.

They found out that social media’s algorithms fed unsuspecting teenagers who might have searched for content to help them with their body images, with more harmful content of a similar nature. The algorithms even suggested special locks that can be installed on a child’s door that would make it impossible for parents to intervene. In one instance, a social media algorithm directed a teenager to an online site that sells nooses.

One of the important advocates for imposing the age limit in Australia is a volunteer-run parents’ movement called Heads up Alliance. Ali Halkic formed the organisation after losing his 17-year-old son Allem to suicide in 2009. He blamed himself and dedicated a great deal of time trying to figure out what factors played a role. He came to the realisation that social media was a plague, a cancer, that was infesting young children.

His organisation told the parliamentary inquiry that in 2018 alone, 450 young kids took their lives in Australia. That’s equivalent to an entire school disappearing every year due to suicide. A high percentage of those deaths were associated with social media. Australia has had enough and so too should other developed and developing countries.