The social media ban and the end of politics

The Albanese government's teen social media ban, which came into effect this morning, is perhaps the Platonic ideal of contemporary politics.

It should make us all very angry. And then it should inspire us to get together and cultivate a better politics. With the kids this politics treats as pawns in its games.

We have a genuine problem relating to the impact of social media - its algorithms, its use for bullying, its addictive nature - on young people. On all of us, for sure, but particularly on growing brains and adolescent sensibilities.

The call goes up: "we must do something!"

So a plan is thrown together.

It's a plan which (as Cam Wilson has written at length over many months) has huge technical question marks over whether it can work at all, even on its own terms.

It's a plan which will be ludicrously easy for some people to simply work around and ignore.

It's a plan which is so poorly thought through that the vast majority of mental health experts say it will worsen the risks to young people. See here and here and here, just as a start.

It's a plan which breaches one of the cardinal rules of policy-making: you don't ban something before you've put genuine alternatives in its place, otherwise you just create more (and often worse) problems.

Fundamentally, it's a plan which addresses one superficial aspect of a deep, systemic issue, treating a serious and complex social issue as a political problem that needs a quick fix.

From the start, this is a plan which almost all the actual experts said needed rethinking and careful development of genuine solutions.

But that's not how politics works today.

We have to "do something". Therefore if you're arguing for a rethink and a more sophisticated approach, you're part of the problem. Get out of the way.

There is no space for sophisticated policy-making.

There is no space for nuance and complexity.

There is no space for expert advice to be taken seriously and fed into policy development.

There is no space for politics - for genuine discussion of an issue across our polity in order to collectively develop appropriate responses.

This is a complex issue. It's also a deeply personal and highly triggering issue.

Like many of you, I'm sure, and like many of our friends, my partner and I have struggled a lot with the tensions around parenting and social media. We tried to limit our kids' use, with very little actual success. We saw its addictive quality (having experienced it ourselves, and continuing to struggle against it), as well as the space it opened for bullying and other antisocial behaviour.

But, we also saw the oasis of care it provided. Even in a household that was supportive and understanding, the connections it provided for our nonbinary kid and other trans kids in our circles, and the advice and validation and support for young people battling depression and anxiety and charting a course through their experiences of neurodivergence, were very real.

And we also saw close up the surging of activism around the climate strikes, and the genuinely sophisticated political analysis and critique, provided by young people's networks on social media.

Banning access to social media for young people is incredibly stupid. It won't work, technically. It will create new inequalities and barriers between those who can circumvent it and those who can't. It provides no new outlets for young people to forge connections and networks of support, especially for queer and isolated and neurodivergent young people. It does nothing to actually enable kids to go outside and play sports or muck around in nature - that requires actual investment in facilities and schools and parks and staff for them all and much more. It will lead to very real harm to some of the most vulnerable members of our society. Having been through some very very dark places, parenting and supporting self-harming and suicidal young people, I am genuinely terrified for the children and their parents and siblings and friends whom this policy will abandon.

Social media is just one of many recent changes in our world that has us floundering around, unmoored, not sure what to do. The world where kids didn't have social media in front of them at all times is part of the no longer. And it wasn't all roses, either. It's not as though kids like me weren't bullied, anyway.

This ban is a classic example of political action that pretends that that old reality isn't no longer, and utterly fails in the task of facing up to, and resisting of, reality, that Hannah Arendt wisely set for us as we come to terms with living in the in between.

The vast majority of conversations I've had about the ban have started with the other person shrugging and saying "well, it's a problem, isn't it? It's not perfect, but don't we have to do something?" and, over the course of the discussion, moving towards simmering anger at the total mismanagement of a serious issue.

A deliberative politics, which involved people in discussion and development of ideas, would come up with a wide range of real ways to address the challenge, to be implemented in communities and families, as well as suggestions for regulating the corporations.

But that wouldn't enable the Prime Minister to grandstand at the UN with his silver bullet.

No wonder people think politics is a joke. It is. This is another nail in its coffin.

Will we let the technofascists win? Or will we gather each other and our young people together, and start creating spaces for a better world to emerge?

End rant.