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Would you let your kids wander through a library full of books that encouraged bullying, violence, eating disorders, suicide, nudity, rape, sexual assault and all manner of other evils in the world?
Would you let them spend 2.5 hours a day there every day? Would you be concerned if they were spending far longer there? Of course you wouldn’t let them visit that library and of course you’d be concerned if they were spending any time there. Yet, that’s what we risk every single time our kids hop on to social media.
Recently a one-day exhibition at Auckland Normal Intermediate School saw all the books in the library removed and 1000 “worst books”, featuring all the above topics, were displayed to hammer home to parents just what their kids might be seeing on social media because stuff like this is easy to find.
I look around me and see more and more people addicted to their phones. I mean, why can’t people work out in the gym without clutching their phone and checking it between sets? It drives me mad. What’s so damn important? What do they think they are missing out on?
Given this, it will come as no surprise that I favour copying Australia’s social media ban for those 16 and under. The Aussies know social media is ruining young lives, rewiring brains so youngsters see society differently, so at least they are trying something. What are we waiting for? Pass the same law and see what happens. At least we’d be putting a line in the sand.
I’m not alone in wanting this ban. The last poll on this saw 74% of New Zealand parents say “yes, let’s restrict social media for teenagers”. The Horizon Research survey, in association with Auckland University’s School of Population Health, found just 16% didn’t support the ban and 10% didn’t know.
Despite this, we once again have regulators who have blinked and politicians who aren’t brave enough. Yet they introduced a ban on cell phones in schools, and that, they say, is working well. Surely, banning under-16s from social media would be a natural extension?
It’s doing nothing for our kids’ communication skills. Obesity is rife, lethargy and laziness result, and even team sports suffer as individuals care less about the result and more about posting their own highlights reel.
Bullying online remains high. Too many school pupils share photos of their private parts, which are then quickly sent on – much to their horror, but they really should know better – and perhaps used as a form of blackmail against them. The consequences have been far-reaching, even resulting in suicides.
Meta this week blocked under-16s in the US, UK, Australia and Canada from livestreaming on Instagram unless they first get parental approval. It is also testing a feature that will blur images containing suspected nudity for under-18s – unless parents turn the feature off.
But with anything, there are likely easy ways around it. Remember the days when our parents sent us to our bedroom for bad behaviour and we’d just jump out the window and face the music later?
As a parent, you’d hesitate to send a teen to their room these days knowing what they might be doing on their phone or computer. Social media has meant getting them out of their rooms is a challenge.
But we might want to start by looking at our own behaviour, so we’re not ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’ Late last year, a Canterbury University study surveyed 400 social media users aged 18-44, asking them about their Facebook and Instagram use. The average time those surveyed spent on social media was 2.5 hours a day, more time than they spend eating and exercising. The study also found participants showed signs of addiction, reporting being subconsciously drawn to using social media.
We know it’s bad for us but we’re more addicted now than we’ve ever been.
Add up 2.5 hours a day and it becomes 38 days a year, but the 2.5 bit might be on the light side, based on feedback from a couple of my son’s mates.
I am often with one of those boys’ fathers, and more often than not his kids will ring him and plead for more data. He gets seriously annoyed with repeated requests for more. When he doesn’t oblige, it’s much to the horror of the teenager.
Kids as young as three and four are seeing nudity. By six, they can write a relatively harmless-sounding word like “boobs” and up comes all manner of pictures.
Online safety campaigner Rob Cope doubts parents know what their kids are up to and the risks they may face. Cope has examples of kids as young as 12 who use social media to meet and connect with others and find themselves in hotel rooms not with the person they thought they’d be meeting but with a sexual predator.
But the last words of this column need to go to departing Labour MP David Parker, that party’s greatest and deepest thinker of recent times by a country mile. Parker said what social media companies allow on their platforms is “ruining civilisation” and “ruining our democracies”.
The comments were made in an interview on TVNZ’s Q+A about the current waves of global instability. Parker admitted those were strong words, “but I believe it to be true.”
“Youth suicide, mental health problems with young people, people getting ripped off all of their savings from scams, and those companies are doing nothing to prevent it – in fact they’re selling services to the people doing it,” he said.
“This is appalling. Lies, defamation, theft of content. Until the world deals with something like that, the lies that we see pervading the world will prevail over truth, and we risk demagoguery and dictatorship.”
It’s a shame Parker isn’t staying around to sponsor a law through Parliament to ban social media to under-16-year-olds. He’d be just the man for the job, and I reckon if it was made a conscience vote it would pass, easily.
Someone in Parliament needs to grab this issue. To leave social media open to our youngest consumers is tantamount to aiding and abetting child abuse. That’s strong, sure, but like Parker said, I believe it to be true.
