What young Aussies REALLY think about a social media ban

Australian Community Media

ACM asked Australian school kids, teens and young influencers attending a Government-organised "social media summit" what they really thought of a potential ban on social media for kids. Here's what they said.

Transcript

00:00I think that it gives a voice to so many creative people, it gave a voice to me.

00:07ACM asked young Australians attending a government-organised social media summit

00:12what they really thought of a potential ban on social media for kids.

00:16I put my music up on TikTok so I basically I do kind of like piano videos with

00:20famous artists and that sort of stuff and I play piano for them.

00:30I don't support a ban because I think that social media is it's an incredible tool,

00:44I think we need to we need to communicate how to use the tool better.

00:48Social media is like taking childhoods and it would be great to win them back for

00:56future generations. There's a lot of comparisons about how someone looks or how you act and

01:03you just get a lower self-esteem. There's been positives for sure but I think overall negative

01:10and I think I often wonder what my life would have been like if I never downloaded it and I think

01:16definitely it would have been better.

01:17I think social media is really positive, I don't know if there's a really proper

01:21way of carving it in, I think young people always find a way to get around it. I think

01:26blanket bans probably won't work especially with how much we young people rely on social media so

01:32I think we probably need to look at other kind of strategies for mitigating the harms that come

01:37with social media.

01:38I don't think it's that simple, there are already age restrictions in the apps and it's more about

01:43if you put bans how are you going to enforce that and I think it takes away a young person's

01:49agency in a sense. You need to put in media literacy and accountability on these big

01:55multi-billion dollar companies before you put a blame and restrict young people's freedoms.

02:00A lot of people that I've either heard of or know personally have been exposed to harmful

02:06messages that can either lead to eating disorders, negative body image.

02:11There are issues whereby a lot of young people may develop depression or anxiety because of

02:16social media, maybe worrying about how many likes their Instagram picture has or how many

02:21friends they have on social media. I think if we can focus on those little issues and teach young

02:26people to not look at it to that extent, we can help improve their mental health.

02:31Nobody knew that I existed or that my music existed but as soon as we started using this

02:36social media platform, it then shared my music with the rest of the world and gave me a voice

02:41for that. And I follow so many people online that use this for good. So I think we should

02:46be focusing on how to make it a positive environment rather than just banning it entirely.

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