We should help teens with social media not ban them from it

Australia recently became the first country in the world to ban kids under 16 from using social media — the result of a law that was passed last year but didn't take effect until this month — but it is unlikely to be the last. Malaysia recently announced that it will also ban social media for users under 16 starting next year — the country's Online Safety Act takes effect January 1, and the communications minister said the government is looking to Australia for guidance on implementing it. Denmark has said it is also moving toward a ban for users under 15, with parental consent allowed from age 13, and Norway is raising the minimum age from 13 to 15. The European Parliament recently voted by an overwhelming majority to set an EU-wide minimum age of 16 for social media, video-sharing platforms, and AI companions, and France, Spain, Italy, Denmark, and Greece are all testing a European age-verification app.

The rationale behind these laws is fairly straightforward: legislators in these countries are convinced that the use of social media apps such as Instagram and TikTok have caused an epidemic of mental health, self-esteem and body-image problems among young people, and in particular teenaged girls — problems that in some cases have led to deaths. This has been fueled by a series of unfortunate incidents, including a 16-year-old boy whose social-media account contained a number of videos discussing death and suicide and who stepped in front of a train in New York, and a 15-year-old schoolgirl in Australia who suffered from bullying on social media and then hanged herself in February 2022. Such incidents have led to a lot of fear-mongering articles by the mainstream media, portraying smartphone use and social media activity as a poison or a virus that creates emotional harm and in some cases mental illness in vulnerable teens.

Is there any scientific evidence that this is the case? The short answer is no. So then why do so many people believe there is? Because the media keeps telling them there is. Before Australia instituted its teenaged social-media ban, I had my suspicions about what might have helped to trigger that country's law but in one of the recent news stories I found confirmation: the person who first proposed the ban and drove it forward was Peter Malinauskas, the Premier of South Australia, who said he started doing so after he read The Anxious Generation, a book by Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist at New York University's Stern School of Business. His wife "put the book down on her lap and turned to me and said you've really got to do something about this," he said. "And then I stopped and thought about it and thought maybe we actually can." So he decided to try to introduce state-level legislation hoping it could win federal support too.

I wrote about some of Haidt's research and conclusions in a Torment Nexus piece in October of last year under the title "The moral panic over social media and teen depression." A moral panic is one in which a technology or form of media (previously television, comic books, video games, etc.) is portrayed as the devil incarnate, and anyone who touches it is assumed to be condemned to a life of torment, the decline of society etc. etc. I think much of the criticism of smartphones and social media that has led to laws like the one in Australia, and other similar efforts powered by books like Haidt's, qualifies as a moral panic. Especially since there are very few facts behind much of this frenzy. Here's how I described it in that Torment Nexus piece last October:

Despite all of the studies, there is still an almost complete lack of any evidence that social media use causes anxiety or depression in young adults. So why do so many people believe it does? Because news articles keep telling them so. “Smartphones and social media are destroying children’s mental health,” the Financial Times wrote last spring, while the Guardian described the smartphone as “a pocket full of poison.” Many of these articles are based on books such as The Anxious Generation, by Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist at the Stern School of Business. Haidt talks about how smartphone use and social media have caused an epidemic of anxiety among young people, and provides a raft of research that he says proves this. But does he prove his case? Not really, according to a number of other social scientists.

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Correlation but not causation

I want to be clear: my intention is not to belittle or downplay the trauma and emotional harm that families suffer when a loved one decides to end their life, or suffers from anxiety and depression! One of my children went through that in their teens and 20's and they are still dealing with the effects, and school bullying — some of which took place on early social-media apps — definitely played a role. But I think that blaming social media or smartphones for that kind of thing is extremely short-sighted, and in many cases I think the cure that Australia and others are implementing could be worse than the disease.

Jonathan Haidt's magazine articles and books tell a very seductive story: over the past few decades, as smartphone use and social-media apps have taken off, the emotional and mental health of teens, especially young girls, has grown toxic. Phones and social networks, he argues, are making our children more unhappy, and in some cases causing them to kill themselves. His articles and books are filled with references to academic studies that he says prove this point. So case closed, right? Not quite, say sociologists and psychologists who specialize in this kind of research. Candice Odgers, a psychology professor at UC Irvine, wrote that Haidt's suggestion that digital technologies are causing an epidemic of mental illness "is not supported by science," and that "hundreds of researchers have searched for the kind of large effects suggested by Haidt" and found plenty of correlation but very little causation. From my October piece:

Haidt often cites research by Jean Twenge, a psychologist at San Diego State, to support his claims of a causal link between smartphone use and anxiety in teens. But in a study published in Nature, Przybylski tried to reproduce some of her findings and was unable to show more than a mild correlation. In fact, he told Platformer, the average correlation between screen time and well-being "was analogous to the correlation between wearing glasses and well being," and therefore might just be a rounding error or statistical anomaly. The impact of smartphone use appears to be more or less the same as the impact of eating potatoes on a regular basis. A meta-analysis of 226 studies in 2022 involving more than a quarter of a million participants found that the association between social media and feelings of well-being was "indistinguishable from zero."

Legislators like Australia's Malinauskas not only ignored this lack of evidence, they chose to misunderstand or misrepresent other research as well: Andrew Przybylski, a professor of human behavior and technology at the University of Oxford, co-authored a study on the effects of social-media use on young people, which was cited by the government of Australia in support of the ban. But Przybylski says the government misinterpreted his study, which found that young people "respond to social media differently based on various personal and environmental factors." Przybylski said it was frustrating to see "nuanced scientific findings oversimplified to support binary policy positions."

Some of you may be thinking that, even if the research is inconclusive, the dangers of social-media use are so serious that a ban is worth it. Some of my friends have said almost this exact thing to me when the subject of the Australian law came up. However, there are a number of reasons why I, and a number of experts, think this is the wrong approach, as I argued in a Torment Nexus piece when the law was first introduced last fall. Two Australian legislators, for example, have argued that the social-media ban not only won't help the children it is meant to help, but will make it harder for kids in marginalized groups to find support from their peers, much of which occurs online for a variety of reasons:

For children in marginalised, remote, or vulnerable situations, social media offers a lifeline. It connects children with disability to peers, resources, and communities they may not otherwise access. It helps LGBTQIA+ youth find acceptance and solidarity. It can improve access to healthcare, particularly for children seeking mental health support. These digital spaces can educate, inform, and remind kids who feel isolated — whether physically or emotionally — that they are not alone. Children and young people have rights to access information and to freely express themselves as they develop and form their identities. A social media ban directly threatens these rights.

Taking away a lifeline

As the Australian legislators point out, it's not just teens from marginalized group that are going to suffer from a ban — so will those who live in remote parts of Australia (and those who have businesses or money-making ventures that are best promoted on social apps such as Instagram and TikTok). The BBC talked with some of the kids who will be affected by the ban, and some were less than impressed. One girl named Breanna who lives with her family on a fairly remote cattle ranch uses an all-terrain buggy that is fitted with an internet extender that allows her to message friends on Snapchat while she's working. On days she gets a little bored, she likes to make funny TikTok videos. With nearly all her friends living at least 100km away, social media is a lifeline. But not anymore, now that Australia's social media ban for children has taken effect. "Taking away our socials is just taking away how we talk to each other," Breanna says.

In a survey of nearly 1,000 young people, 96 percent said social media was important because it provided access friends and support, and 82 percent believed that a ban would leave them disconnected. Brisbane schoolgirl Sadie Angus told the BBC she turned 13 just a few weeks ago and opening an Instagram account was a rite of passage for her. But it was a short-lived one, since the law means she's now being kicked off it and she said that she is frustrated. "I can admit more things on there than I can in real life," said Sadie, who often prefers to keep her anonymity when she is online. "I use it as a safe space to share what I've had to go through and since nobody knows who I am, they can't come to me in real life and talk about it and that feels kind of comforting."

Among those criticizing the bill are tech companies, not surprisingly — including Reddit, which has sued the Australian government, arguing that the law is an infringement of the free-speech rights of Australian citizens. They aren't the only ones: two 15-year-old Australians are also suing the government, backed by a group called the Digital Freedom Project. According to the group, teenagers rely on social media for information and association, and a ban could hurt the nation's most vulnerable kids — young people with disabilities, First Nations youth, rural and remote kids and LGBTQ teenagers. Other measures to improve online safety should be used instead, the group argues, pointing to digital literacy programs and age-appropriate features for platforms. Here's more from my previous piece on the Australian social-media law:

As the Electronic Frontier Foundation noted in a statement about the proposed federal Protecting Kids On Social Media Act, banning children under 13 from having social media accounts is "a massive overreach that takes authority away from parents and infringes on the First Amendment rights of minors." Even those under 13 have a constitutional right to speak online and to access others’ speech via social media, the organization pointed out, something that the Supreme Court has upheld in a recent ruling. As FIRE noted in a statement, the highest court has made it clear that restrictions on teens' access to online content is legally permissible only in "relatively narrow and well-defined circumstances," which a blanket age-gated ban likely doesn't satisfy.

As researcher danah boyd (who chooses to spell her name without using capital letters) wrote recently, social media use can be risky for teens, but so can just about everything else they experience at that age, most of which we don't legislate. "Can social media be risky for youth? Of course. So can school. So can friendship. So can the kitchen. So can navigating parents. Can social media be designed better? Absolutely. So can school. So can the kitchen." So why not spend our time and resources either a) trying to force social-media companies to redesign or better implement protections in their apps, and/or b) try to educate and help teens who are having problems with social-media related issues. Laws like Australia's are blunt instruments, and there's a better than even chance that they will not solve the problems they claim to be interested in addressing.

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