Heather du Plessis-Allan: Will Australia's social media ban actually work?

So tomorrow's the big day, isn't it? And it is, I think, not an overstatement to say that the eyes of the world, well, at least politicians around the world, are going to be on Australia and whether the social media ban will actually work.

And that is still a live question, isn't it? We're less than 24 hours from the thing taking effect and none of us can totally say for sure that we know it's going to work. 

For two reasons: one, it's the internet, so there's always a workaround out there. And two, it involves kids, and if there's a workaround, kids will find the workaround.

I'm going to call it for you now: it's not going to work, if your definition of working is that 100% of children under 16 get kicked off and stay off until they're 16.  

But I think it is possible that it is going to work if your definition is a little bit more flexible, which is that most kids get kicked off and stay off because their parents force them to do it. And I think that is the key thing here, like it always is, parents getting involved.  

Talking about whether it works or not, actually I think kind of misses the point here, which is that this gives parents something that they haven't had yet, which is permission to keep their kids off social media. Because what parents have been finding is it's very hard to keep 14 year old Susie off social media, off Facebook, off Instagram, off TikTok, off Snapchat, because all Susie's friends are on it. And if Susie's not on it, then she becomes the weird kid, and nobody wants their kid to be the weird kid, right? So you relent and you let Susie on it.  

This has the potential to flip all of that pressure around. Now everyone's off. Now the kid that's on it, little Johnny's on it, Susie comes home and says, oh Johnny's on TikTok, can I go on TikTok? You go, no, Johnny's a naughty kid from a family that has no rules, no boundaries, no discipline. Susie, you've got boundaries and discipline your parents care about, you stay off. It gives permission for the parents to be able to do that kind of thing.  

And if you're a parent, you know peer pressure is massive, isn't it? Especially in the teenage years. The Aussie government's doing its bit by bringing us to this point. The tech companies are being dragged into doing their bit and ultimately this will live or die in Australia based on whether Australian parents do their bit and actually step up to the plate and parent properly. 

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