Principal 

Thank you to those many parents who attended Susan McLean’s cyber safety presentation on Tuesday night this week. It was an enlightening session, even to someone working daily with young people. I was particularly interested in Susan’s position on the upcoming age restrictions for social media. From 10 December this year select social media platforms will be required to take “responsible steps to prevent underage account holders onto their services”. In practice, the law will essentially require companies to implement  age verification systems to prevent under-16s from setting up an account. The law will apply to Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, X and YouTube amongst other platforms. 

This seems on the surface like a positive step, and has been welcomed by parents, including me and many in our community, as providing implicit support and an external reference point for our own attempts to limit social media for our children. 

Susan forcefully put a position on Tuesday night that, in her view, there are serious flaws with the legislation. They include that:

• there are no penalties for young people who get around the age restrictions or for parents who assist them to do so
• it is essentially a self-monitoring system where social media companies must report and expel users under 16 years of age, despite the potential revenue they attract
• it gives the message that the platforms it applies to are bad (when they’re not always) and those that are not banned are good (which they’re not either) 
• parents will take a less active role in policing their child’s social media, assuming the ban will do it for them; and that
• important communities of support will be blocked for young people who are potentially already socially isolated. 

This position jarred with my immediate reaction, as it seems a social media ban would be a wise and responsible thing for communities and society at large to support. I am grateful, however, to Susan for raising them and for challenging this automatic position. The devil is always in the detail, and there is plenty of both here.