Australia’s dummy spit over kids on social media isn’t the answer. We need an internet for children

The internet, including social media, was not made with children and young people in mind. This is why online experiences are not always good for children and sometimes even exploitative, risky, and deeply problematic. No wonder parents are worried, educators are at a loss and the government feels compelled to act. But banning children from social media is not the answer.
Anthony Albanese’s announcement on Tuesday that the government intends to introduce legislation to enforce a minimum age on children accessing social media is a knee-jerk reaction. It has been made before the recent Joint Select Committee on Social Media and Australian Society has even issued a proper interim report, which undermines evidence-based policy.
It is possible to chart the political and public discourses about banning children from social media to the publication of The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. There is a direct link between the language of Haidt’s book and the 36 months campaign, led by media personalities, which Albanese endorsed on radio in May. Haidt’s claims have been disputed by experts at London School of Economics.
Contrary to what the politicians keep saying, the evidence is not clear. But what is clear is that books that tap into parental anxieties should not be used as the driving force to enact national policy.
Indeed, banning children from social media not only erodes their right to be online, as articulated here under the UN’s General Comment No. 25, but will undoubtedly continue to place an unfair burden of responsibility on parents to regulate their children’s digital experiences.
What is the government even defining as “social media” in this proposed ban? Watching educational videos on YouTube? Using WhatsApp to message family and friends? Making and playing games with peers on Roblox? And if children can no longer access the social media where they were previously connecting, playing and learning — where will they go instead? The most likely answer is they’ll find new online places and content that is lower quality, less regulated and more risky than the large platforms that they use today.
This is why conversations about a ban are a distraction from the conversation we really need to be having: how can the government support the development of high-quality experiences online for children of different ages?
Scissors can be dangerous to children, but we don’t ban scissors, we redesign them so children can learn how to use them safely. We need to formally create safe, playful, exploratory, fun, entertaining, positive and educational experiences online while recognising that what may be appropriate, for example, for one 13-year-old may be different to another.
This is why it is useful to think about all the digital products, services, and content that children experience online—including both things “made-for” children and things not made for children but likely accessed by children, like social media—as the “children’s internet”.
I implore the media, politicians, and the public to start referring to children’s experiences online as the “children’s internet”. The term reminds us that not only do children have a right to be online, but it is also in our interest to support “good childhoods” as children grow up in an evolving digital world.
Just like the attention paid to “children’s television” in the past in terms of government investment and classification systems to support parental guidance, the children’s internet helps us recognise children’s online experiences as a public good worth investing in.
The Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child has published the Manifesto for a better Children’s Internet which outlines 17 Principles on a better Children’s Internet that industry, government, educators, parents and carers and various stakeholders can enact to create better digital experiences for children.
These include the development of quality standards for age-appropriate entertainment and educational products and services for children, to ensure the production of “made for kids” products, services and content are age-appropriate, suitable and relevant.
It also calls for less focus on protecting children from the digital environment and more focus on protecting them within. There needs to be greater emphasis on guardrails, rather than excluding children. Policy should focus on children and young people’s perspectives in how they use digital media.
It is important to remember that the internet, including social media, provides children with a multitude of positive and pleasurable opportunities. The internet has enhanced children’s lives in many ways and we need to recognise that it will continue to play an important role as they move through childhood, into their teen years and adulthood.
Online experiences will be central to how they learn, their careers and how they experience everyday life. Excluding children is not the answer, supporting the children’s internet is.