From pocket knives to Instagram, a ban just isn't the answer

The Advertiser

15 hours ago

This is a sample of The Echidna newsletter sent out each weekday morning. To sign up for FREE, go to theechidna.com.au
The blade was stuck in my knee. There was no pain at first. Just fear and shock. I'd been given a pocket knife for my 12th birthday and while hurling it about, testing its heft in a menacing fashion, it came loose in my hand, burying itself in my right kneecap.
I yanked it free and limped home, leaving a trail of blood on the footpath. The backyard hose cleaned the wound. Bandages and a pair of long pants hid the injury. Fearing my prized knife would be confiscated, I never told a soul. Yet the scar remains half a century later, testament to the carefree risks and vulnerabilities of childhood.
Bloody kids. Always putting themselves in danger. Our driving instinct is to protect them, which is why we no longer give children pocket knives or let them bounce on rusty trampolines above gravel driveways. These days their injuries aren't always so visible. They're inflicted by notifications and comment threads. Social media, we are warned, is the latest danger zone.
So we're banning it. From December Australian law will prohibit children 16 and under from using Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and other platforms. The instinct is understandable. The online world at its worst is cruel and addictive. But at its best it is inclusive, educational and even aspirational, which is why this legislation ranks among the most arbitrary, knee-jerk and hypocritical laws conceived by a government in a long time.
We don't teach children water safety by banning them from the swimming pool. We give them lessons. We don't teach road safety by taking away their bikes. We hand them helmets and show them how to navigate streets and obey traffic rules. We educate them as best we can while accepting that learning is a gradual, messy and sometimes painful experience.
Social media is no longer just a de facto town square. It's a digital playground, meeting place and classroom. It's where friendships are built and maintained and creativity and identity are explored. It also has its dark places where trolls, bullies and predators lurk, preying on adolescent anxieties. In other words, it's not so different from the real world.
Removing young people's access to social media will not blunt their desire for connection or self-expression. Many will find a way around it. We're already seeing a rise in the use of VPNs - Virtual Private Networks - that mask your internet address. Even the government has admitted its move is "messy". Uncertainty surrounds the law's enforcement, with age-verification technologies like facial recognition and ID-uploading systems mired in privacy concerns.
"Social media companies have a social responsibility," said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Of course they do. Just like the gambling and alcohol industries, whose socially damaging products we continue to excuse by allowing them to air advertisements with lip-service warnings spoken at an incomprehensibly fast rate.
But doesn't society carry the greatest responsibility when it comes to childhood safety? By banning young people from social media we're denying them opportunities to learn how to cope with a world they will have to soon confront anyway. Instead of treating them like passive victims of nasty, all-knowing algorithms, why not equip them with the skills to detect misinformation and abuse?
A forward-thinking society should treat living in the digital world as seriously as it does maths and English. Classes devoted to privacy, artificial intelligence, self-esteem and online civility should be mandatory in the national curriculum. Courses should involve parents. Even the tech companies, now profiteering off young people's eyeballs while enjoying minimal transparency, could be made to participate and engage with students.
The answer isn't prohibition. It rarely is. The answer is education. It's about teaching our children the difference between friends and followers, between reality and superficiality.
Kids don't need less access to social media. They need greater access to adults willing to show them how to use it safely, just like most things in our increasingly complicated world.
HAVE YOUR SAY: Should under-16s be banned from social media or should we better educate children on how to use it? Have you experienced the negative side of social media or do you believe it has brought us closer? Email us: [e-mail]
SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoy The Echidna, forward it to a friend so they can sign up, too.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
- Police have announced a $1 million reward for information as they hunt for the criminals behind the alleged gangland murder of Robert Issa in 2023.
- Australia has pledged an extra $20 million in humanitarian aid for women and children in war-torn Gaza after more than 100,000 people turned out in protest across the country to protest the suffering in the besieged enclave.
- A parrot on the brink of extinction could thwart plans for an open-cut coal mine expansion after records of the bird were discovered to be missing from the key database of species sightings.
THEY SAID IT: "Social media is reducing social barriers. It connects people on the strength of human values, not identities." - Narendra Modi.
YOU SAID IT: Steve wrote about the entitlement of the rich and some of the appalling behaviour their wealth enables.
Deidre wrote: "Powerful stories in your newsletter and your perspective that the entitlement of the rich costs the rest of us, is so true. You wrote - Where will it all end? Whatever became of Australia's famed egalitarianism? It seems to me that the Australian "fair go" idea is just a handy myth for wealthy to perpetuate. Sadly, I don't see a fair go at play in the latest Close the Gap results."
Susan says we tend to be more lenient to the self-made billionaires: "Their offspring, the nepo babies, are the ones being parachuted into serious wealth. Usually with little talent because it doesn't work like that. Have any of the subsequent Rockefellers done anything useful?"
Adam wrote about his brother "who ruthlessly chased the almighty dollar in years past. He once told me that he believed in the old saying that 'he who dies with the most toys, wins'. I pointed out to him that he who dies with the most toys is dead, and those that are left get to fight over those toys. We all finish up in the same place one day, so accruing wealth, possessions, and a sense of entitlement will make no difference to our ultimate fate."
Arthur looked to the past for a warning: "History reveals we are heading for disaster if we continue to fail to address the problem of the rich becoming richer while the poor become poorer. The best example is the French Revolution. We have been warned."
What we do with our money was a question of choice for Jan: "Two good teacher incomes and our choice was to buy land and build a holiday house. Contemporaries chose overseas trips. They are left with a diary, photos and memories. We are left with real estate that has increased in value. Both are valuable and both came about by choice."
This is a sample of The Echidna newsletter sent out each weekday morning. To sign up for FREE, go to theechidna.com.au
The blade was stuck in my knee. There was no pain at first. Just fear and shock. I'd been given a pocket knife for my 12th birthday and while hurling it about, testing its heft in a menacing fashion, it came loose in my hand, burying itself in my right kneecap.
I yanked it free and limped home, leaving a trail of blood on the footpath. The backyard hose cleaned the wound. Bandages and a pair of long pants hid the injury. Fearing my prized knife would be confiscated, I never told a soul. Yet the scar remains half a century later, testament to the carefree risks and vulnerabilities of childhood.
Bloody kids. Always putting themselves in danger. Our driving instinct is to protect them, which is why we no longer give children pocket knives or let them bounce on rusty trampolines above gravel driveways. These days their injuries aren't always so visible. They're inflicted by notifications and comment threads. Social media, we are warned, is the latest danger zone.
So we're banning it. From December Australian law will prohibit children 16 and under from using Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and other platforms. The instinct is understandable. The online world at its worst is cruel and addictive. But at its best it is inclusive, educational and even aspirational, which is why this legislation ranks among the most arbitrary, knee-jerk and hypocritical laws conceived by a government in a long time.
We don't teach children water safety by banning them from the swimming pool. We give them lessons. We don't teach road safety by taking away their bikes. We hand them helmets and show them how to navigate streets and obey traffic rules. We educate them as best we can while accepting that learning is a gradual, messy and sometimes painful experience.
Social media is no longer just a de facto town square. It's a digital playground, meeting place and classroom. It's where friendships are built and maintained and creativity and identity are explored. It also has its dark places where trolls, bullies and predators lurk, preying on adolescent anxieties. In other words, it's not so different from the real world.
Removing young people's access to social media will not blunt their desire for connection or self-expression. Many will find a way around it. We're already seeing a rise in the use of VPNs - Virtual Private Networks - that mask your internet address. Even the government has admitted its move is "messy". Uncertainty surrounds the law's enforcement, with age-verification technologies like facial recognition and ID-uploading systems mired in privacy concerns.
"Social media companies have a social responsibility," said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Of course they do. Just like the gambling and alcohol industries, whose socially damaging products we continue to excuse by allowing them to air advertisements with lip-service warnings spoken at an incomprehensibly fast rate.
But doesn't society carry the greatest responsibility when it comes to childhood safety? By banning young people from social media we're denying them opportunities to learn how to cope with a world they will have to soon confront anyway. Instead of treating them like passive victims of nasty, all-knowing algorithms, why not equip them with the skills to detect misinformation and abuse?
A forward-thinking society should treat living in the digital world as seriously as it does maths and English. Classes devoted to privacy, artificial intelligence, self-esteem and online civility should be mandatory in the national curriculum. Courses should involve parents. Even the tech companies, now profiteering off young people's eyeballs while enjoying minimal transparency, could be made to participate and engage with students.
The answer isn't prohibition. It rarely is. The answer is education. It's about teaching our children the difference between friends and followers, between reality and superficiality.
Kids don't need less access to social media. They need greater access to adults willing to show them how to use it safely, just like most things in our increasingly complicated world.
HAVE YOUR SAY: Should under-16s be banned from social media or should we better educate children on how to use it? Have you experienced the negative side of social media or do you believe it has brought us closer? Email us: [e-mail]
SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoy The Echidna, forward it to a friend so they can sign up, too.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
- Police have announced a $1 million reward for information as they hunt for the criminals behind the alleged gangland murder of Robert Issa in 2023.
- Australia has pledged an extra $20 million in humanitarian aid for women and children in war-torn Gaza after more than 100,000 people turned out in protest across the country to protest the suffering in the besieged enclave.
- A parrot on the brink of extinction could thwart plans for an open-cut coal mine expansion after records of the bird were discovered to be missing from the key database of species sightings.
THEY SAID IT: "Social media is reducing social barriers. It connects people on the strength of human values, not identities." - Narendra Modi.
YOU SAID IT: Steve wrote about the entitlement of the rich and some of the appalling behaviour their wealth enables.
Deidre wrote: "Powerful stories in your newsletter and your perspective that the entitlement of the rich costs the rest of us, is so true. You wrote - Where will it all end? Whatever became of Australia's famed egalitarianism? It seems to me that the Australian "fair go" idea is just a handy myth for wealthy to perpetuate. Sadly, I don't see a fair go at play in the latest Close the Gap results."
Susan says we tend to be more lenient to the self-made billionaires: "Their offspring, the nepo babies, are the ones being parachuted into serious wealth. Usually with little talent because it doesn't work like that. Have any of the subsequent Rockefellers done anything useful?"
Adam wrote about his brother "who ruthlessly chased the almighty dollar in years past. He once told me that he believed in the old saying that 'he who dies with the most toys, wins'. I pointed out to him that he who dies with the most toys is dead, and those that are left get to fight over those toys. We all finish up in the same place one day, so accruing wealth, possessions, and a sense of entitlement will make no difference to our ultimate fate."
Arthur looked to the past for a warning: "History reveals we are heading for disaster if we continue to fail to address the problem of the rich becoming richer while the poor become poorer. The best example is the French Revolution. We have been warned."
What we do with our money was a question of choice for Jan: "Two good teacher incomes and our choice was to buy land and build a holiday house. Contemporaries chose overseas trips. They are left with a diary, photos and memories. We are left with real estate that has increased in value. Both are valuable and both came about by choice."
This is a sample of The Echidna newsletter sent out each weekday morning. To sign up for FREE, go to theechidna.com.au
The blade was stuck in my knee. There was no pain at first. Just fear and shock. I'd been given a pocket knife for my 12th birthday and while hurling it about, testing its heft in a menacing fashion, it came loose in my hand, burying itself in my right kneecap.
I yanked it free and limped home, leaving a trail of blood on the footpath. The backyard hose cleaned the wound. Bandages and a pair of long pants hid the injury. Fearing my prized knife would be confiscated, I never told a soul. Yet the scar remains half a century later, testament to the carefree risks and vulnerabilities of childhood.
Bloody kids. Always putting themselves in danger. Our driving instinct is to protect them, which is why we no longer give children pocket knives or let them bounce on rusty trampolines above gravel driveways. These days their injuries aren't always so visible. They're inflicted by notifications and comment threads. Social media, we are warned, is the latest danger zone.
So we're banning it. From December Australian law will prohibit children 16 and under from using Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and other platforms. The instinct is understandable. The online world at its worst is cruel and addictive. But at its best it is inclusive, educational and even aspirational, which is why this legislation ranks among the most arbitrary, knee-jerk and hypocritical laws conceived by a government in a long time.
We don't teach children water safety by banning them from the swimming pool. We give them lessons. We don't teach road safety by taking away their bikes. We hand them helmets and show them how to navigate streets and obey traffic rules. We educate them as best we can while accepting that learning is a gradual, messy and sometimes painful experience.
Social media is no longer just a de facto town square. It's a digital playground, meeting place and classroom. It's where friendships are built and maintained and creativity and identity are explored. It also has its dark places where trolls, bullies and predators lurk, preying on adolescent anxieties. In other words, it's not so different from the real world.
Removing young people's access to social media will not blunt their desire for connection or self-expression. Many will find a way around it. We're already seeing a rise in the use of VPNs - Virtual Private Networks - that mask your internet address. Even the government has admitted its move is "messy". Uncertainty surrounds the law's enforcement, with age-verification technologies like facial recognition and ID-uploading systems mired in privacy concerns.
"Social media companies have a social responsibility," said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Of course they do. Just like the gambling and alcohol industries, whose socially damaging products we continue to excuse by allowing them to air advertisements with lip-service warnings spoken at an incomprehensibly fast rate.
But doesn't society carry the greatest responsibility when it comes to childhood safety? By banning young people from social media we're denying them opportunities to learn how to cope with a world they will have to soon confront anyway. Instead of treating them like passive victims of nasty, all-knowing algorithms, why not equip them with the skills to detect misinformation and abuse?
A forward-thinking society should treat living in the digital world as seriously as it does maths and English. Classes devoted to privacy, artificial intelligence, self-esteem and online civility should be mandatory in the national curriculum. Courses should involve parents. Even the tech companies, now profiteering off young people's eyeballs while enjoying minimal transparency, could be made to participate and engage with students.
The answer isn't prohibition. It rarely is. The answer is education. It's about teaching our children the difference between friends and followers, between reality and superficiality.
Kids don't need less access to social media. They need greater access to adults willing to show them how to use it safely, just like most things in our increasingly complicated world.
HAVE YOUR SAY: Should under-16s be banned from social media or should we better educate children on how to use it? Have you experienced the negative side of social media or do you believe it has brought us closer? Email us: [e-mail]
SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoy The Echidna, forward it to a friend so they can sign up, too.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
- Police have announced a $1 million reward for information as they hunt for the criminals behind the alleged gangland murder of Robert Issa in 2023.
- Australia has pledged an extra $20 million in humanitarian aid for women and children in war-torn Gaza after more than 100,000 people turned out in protest across the country to protest the suffering in the besieged enclave.
- A parrot on the brink of extinction could thwart plans for an open-cut coal mine expansion after records of the bird were discovered to be missing from the key database of species sightings.
THEY SAID IT: "Social media is reducing social barriers. It connects people on the strength of human values, not identities." - Narendra Modi.
YOU SAID IT: Steve wrote about the entitlement of the rich and some of the appalling behaviour their wealth enables.
Deidre wrote: "Powerful stories in your newsletter and your perspective that the entitlement of the rich costs the rest of us, is so true. You wrote - Where will it all end? Whatever became of Australia's famed egalitarianism? It seems to me that the Australian "fair go" idea is just a handy myth for wealthy to perpetuate. Sadly, I don't see a fair go at play in the latest Close the Gap results."
Susan says we tend to be more lenient to the self-made billionaires: "Their offspring, the nepo babies, are the ones being parachuted into serious wealth. Usually with little talent because it doesn't work like that. Have any of the subsequent Rockefellers done anything useful?"
Adam wrote about his brother "who ruthlessly chased the almighty dollar in years past. He once told me that he believed in the old saying that 'he who dies with the most toys, wins'. I pointed out to him that he who dies with the most toys is dead, and those that are left get to fight over those toys. We all finish up in the same place one day, so accruing wealth, possessions, and a sense of entitlement will make no difference to our ultimate fate."
Arthur looked to the past for a warning: "History reveals we are heading for disaster if we continue to fail to address the problem of the rich becoming richer while the poor become poorer. The best example is the French Revolution. We have been warned."
What we do with our money was a question of choice for Jan: "Two good teacher incomes and our choice was to buy land and build a holiday house. Contemporaries chose overseas trips. They are left with a diary, photos and memories. We are left with real estate that has increased in value. Both are valuable and both came about by choice."
This is a sample of The Echidna newsletter sent out each weekday morning. To sign up for FREE, go to theechidna.com.au
The blade was stuck in my knee. There was no pain at first. Just fear and shock. I'd been given a pocket knife for my 12th birthday and while hurling it about, testing its heft in a menacing fashion, it came loose in my hand, burying itself in my right kneecap.
I yanked it free and limped home, leaving a trail of blood on the footpath. The backyard hose cleaned the wound. Bandages and a pair of long pants hid the injury. Fearing my prized knife would be confiscated, I never told a soul. Yet the scar remains half a century later, testament to the carefree risks and vulnerabilities of childhood.
Bloody kids. Always putting themselves in danger. Our driving instinct is to protect them, which is why we no longer give children pocket knives or let them bounce on rusty trampolines above gravel driveways. These days their injuries aren't always so visible. They're inflicted by notifications and comment threads. Social media, we are warned, is the latest danger zone.
So we're banning it. From December Australian law will prohibit children 16 and under from using Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and other platforms. The instinct is understandable. The online world at its worst is cruel and addictive. But at its best it is inclusive, educational and even aspirational, which is why this legislation ranks among the most arbitrary, knee-jerk and hypocritical laws conceived by a government in a long time.
We don't teach children water safety by banning them from the swimming pool. We give them lessons. We don't teach road safety by taking away their bikes. We hand them helmets and show them how to navigate streets and obey traffic rules. We educate them as best we can while accepting that learning is a gradual, messy and sometimes painful experience.
Social media is no longer just a de facto town square. It's a digital playground, meeting place and classroom. It's where friendships are built and maintained and creativity and identity are explored. It also has its dark places where trolls, bullies and predators lurk, preying on adolescent anxieties. In other words, it's not so different from the real world.
Removing young people's access to social media will not blunt their desire for connection or self-expression. Many will find a way around it. We're already seeing a rise in the use of VPNs - Virtual Private Networks - that mask your internet address. Even the government has admitted its move is "messy". Uncertainty surrounds the law's enforcement, with age-verification technologies like facial recognition and ID-uploading systems mired in privacy concerns.
"Social media companies have a social responsibility," said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Of course they do. Just like the gambling and alcohol industries, whose socially damaging products we continue to excuse by allowing them to air advertisements with lip-service warnings spoken at an incomprehensibly fast rate.
But doesn't society carry the greatest responsibility when it comes to childhood safety? By banning young people from social media we're denying them opportunities to learn how to cope with a world they will have to soon confront anyway. Instead of treating them like passive victims of nasty, all-knowing algorithms, why not equip them with the skills to detect misinformation and abuse?
A forward-thinking society should treat living in the digital world as seriously as it does maths and English. Classes devoted to privacy, artificial intelligence, self-esteem and online civility should be mandatory in the national curriculum. Courses should involve parents. Even the tech companies, now profiteering off young people's eyeballs while enjoying minimal transparency, could be made to participate and engage with students.
The answer isn't prohibition. It rarely is. The answer is education. It's about teaching our children the difference between friends and followers, between reality and superficiality.
Kids don't need less access to social media. They need greater access to adults willing to show them how to use it safely, just like most things in our increasingly complicated world.
HAVE YOUR SAY: Should under-16s be banned from social media or should we better educate children on how to use it? Have you experienced the negative side of social media or do you believe it has brought us closer? Email us: [e-mail]
SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoy The Echidna, forward it to a friend so they can sign up, too.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
- Police have announced a $1 million reward for information as they hunt for the criminals behind the alleged gangland murder of Robert Issa in 2023.
- Australia has pledged an extra $20 million in humanitarian aid for women and children in war-torn Gaza after more than 100,000 people turned out in protest across the country to protest the suffering in the besieged enclave.
- A parrot on the brink of extinction could thwart plans for an open-cut coal mine expansion after records of the bird were discovered to be missing from the key database of species sightings.
THEY SAID IT: "Social media is reducing social barriers. It connects people on the strength of human values, not identities." - Narendra Modi.
YOU SAID IT: Steve wrote about the entitlement of the rich and some of the appalling behaviour their wealth enables.
Deidre wrote: "Powerful stories in your newsletter and your perspective that the entitlement of the rich costs the rest of us, is so true. You wrote - Where will it all end? Whatever became of Australia's famed egalitarianism? It seems to me that the Australian "fair go" idea is just a handy myth for wealthy to perpetuate. Sadly, I don't see a fair go at play in the latest Close the Gap results."
Susan says we tend to be more lenient to the self-made billionaires: "Their offspring, the nepo babies, are the ones being parachuted into serious wealth. Usually with little talent because it doesn't work like that. Have any of the subsequent Rockefellers done anything useful?"
Adam wrote about his brother "who ruthlessly chased the almighty dollar in years past. He once told me that he believed in the old saying that 'he who dies with the most toys, wins'. I pointed out to him that he who dies with the most toys is dead, and those that are left get to fight over those toys. We all finish up in the same place one day, so accruing wealth, possessions, and a sense of entitlement will make no difference to our ultimate fate."
Arthur looked to the past for a warning: "History reveals we are heading for disaster if we continue to fail to address the problem of the rich becoming richer while the poor become poorer. The best example is the French Revolution. We have been warned."
What we do with our money was a question of choice for Jan: "Two good teacher incomes and our choice was to buy land and build a holiday house. Contemporaries chose overseas trips. They are left with a diary, photos and memories. We are left with real estate that has increased in value. Both are valuable and both came about by choice."