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Bringing in a ban for kids under the age of 16 is the right thing to do. First and foremost, social media is demonstrably harmful to our kids. At all our local schools, time after time, I hear the same sad stories of relentless issues of cyberbullying. The kids are so much more angst ridden and depressed than before. So much so that Jonathon Haidt, a world-renowned psychologist, has authored a best-selling book called The Anxiety Generation! Look at this graph below from Haidt’s work. It clearly shows that anxiety amongst children is on the rise ever since the invention of social media. A coincidence? I think not, there is no other explanation for this, therefore social media is undoubtedly causing a rise in anxiety. Surely if there is anything the government is supposed to do, it is to protect our children from
harms. How could you argue with that? Furthermore, if those other harms were not enough, whistleblowers and decent tech-company insiders have come forward to reveal that social media is deliberately designed to be addictive. The whistleblowers – such as the decent folk at The Center for Humane Technology – point to the endless scrolling mechanism that one finds on Facebook and TikTok, and how social media has prompts and alerts that are hard to switch off. All of these are designed to make social media more and more addictive for our kids. Indeed, it is so bad, that Jonathon Haidt said in a recent interview that social media is “more addictive than heroin”! How can people be opposed to a ban when you hear that?! Do these people want to give our kids drugs as well?! The argument for the ban just seems so obvious to me and any right-minded person. With
anything else in society that is harmful – be it cigarettes, alcohol, drugs – we agree, as a society,
that it is in need of some form regulation. I mean, you wouldn’t let your 13-year-old have a cigarette, would you? Obvious. Well, who is going to do the regulation then? Either Government or Big tech needs to regulate social media. And, as all the latest scandals and skullduggery shows – just look at that dork Elon Musk for Christ’s sakes – Big tech has failed spectacularly to regulate itself. Therefore, we need government regulation of social media to protect our kids. Now you may have heard complaints from naysayers who raise a bunch of silly objections. But you cannot trust them when they say the ban won’t work and education is the way, they’ve in the pockets of Big tech, and they only care about making more money. They will say things like “it will be hard for parents to enforce this ban”. But why should the fact that there are some lazy parents who think that good parenting is not worth a bit of effort be allowed to undermine the
wellbeing of all our young people? And imagine if someone said, “I let my 13-year-old smoke but
don’t worry I make sure to educate them on the dangers of lung cancer,” you’d think they were a
moron. Surely, the shills for Big tech cannot think we are that stupid? Ultimately, and this is what matters most, this is what all Australians want. Well, at least trueblue Aussies. Australians are decent people, and you’d have to be a bit of a bastard and not care about kids to be against this ban. But don’t just take it from me; prominent people, like great
bloke and Nova 96.9 Radio host Wippa, has recently said, “kids need more time to develop healthy and secure identities before they’re exposed to the minefield of social media”. And luckily the ‘Let Them be Kids’ campaign – spurred on by the always reliable News Corp Australia – has taken a lead in raising public awareness about this terrible blight on society. Indeed, The Guardian recently reported that an Essential Poll in September 2024 found that 67% of people aged 18-34 support the ban.
You can’t argue with that.
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