TORONTO. A new law in Australia aims to ban social media platforms from offering profiles to under-16s, but some experts say the measure is misguided.
Legislation passed this week aims to protect young people from the potential mental health harm associated with social media use, but those who study the problem say it’s not as simple as kicking kids off the apps.
“It’s a lot like taking a hammer to a problem that needs a scalpel,” said Bree McEwen, a University of Toronto professor who studies social media and relationships.
What do we know about the impact of social media on teenagers?
There are many worry about how social media is affecting teens’ mental health, but McEwan said the danger has been somewhat exaggerated.
She co-authored a 2022 paper published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships that reviewed more than 360 studies of social media (or “computer-mediated communication”) and well-being. The researchers found that, as with most things, the problem is nuanced.
“There are a couple of big bright studies that (show) very small negative effects, but most studies either had no results or had small positive effects (or) small negative effects,” McEwan said.
“We have a lot of research that shows there are certain features for teenagers that are really good for social media.”
Isolated or marginalized young people, such as LGBTQ+ or racial minorities, can find great value in online communities. Similarly, McEwan said, social media has helped combat loneliness during the pandemic.
As for the negative effects of social media on the well-being of teenagers, it is mostly due to “upward social comparison: looking at the feeds of people who are like this amazing life, then comparing your own life and asking, “my life is not this amazing all the time,” McEwan said.
Some of the studies that found social media to have a negative impact looked specifically at “problematic or compulsive Internet use,” which may not reflect how most teens interact with apps.
What is the situation in Canada?
Platforms like Facebook, TikTok and Snapchat require users to be at least 13 years old, but McEwan said kids can — and do — easily get around that by lying about their year of birth when they sign up for an account.
Meanwhile, Instagram has launched “teen accounts” in some markets, including Canada. Accounts come with special settings, including setting profiles to private by default, limiting who can send messages, tagging and mentioning young users, and issuing reminders to close the app after they’ve spent an hour on it each day.
But these policies are not mandatory. Australia’s law is the first in the world, so there is no such blanket ban in this country. But some school boards have banned social media platforms from their Wi-Fi networks, and several provinces have banned cellphone use in classrooms.
McEwan said banning cell phones in certain environments is very different from banning social media.
“I don’t see any problem with saying you need to leave your phone in the locker and focus on that particular task,” she said. “Actually, I think it’s teaching good habits around the device. Sometimes we use it, and sometimes we don’t.”
But banning social media from school networks is something else, McEwan said. This prevents students from developing these good habits and in some cases prevents them from forming relationships with each other.
“You’re taking away the ability to use those channels as official channels for the school, for student groups, for promoting plays, etc.,” she said. “Then it starts to come up: What are you really getting at here?”
Not everyone agrees.
The youth wing of the ruling Avenir Quebec coalition is pushing for its province to follow Australia’s example. Aurelie Deep, 22, who heads the youth wing, said she believes social media is contributing to poor concentration and sleep deprivation among her peers. She even experiences it herself.
“At night, before I go to bed, I say to myself, ‘I’m going to look at Instagram one last time and then I’m going to bed,'” she said. “And then I could spend an hour on it.”
What can happen if teenagers are banned from social networks?
Kate Maddalena, a professor of media theory at U of T, said she has no convictions about the ban.
“I’m glad that national governments are supporting a huge platform. I’m glad they’re putting pressure on platforms to take responsibility for the harm social media platforms are causing to young people,” she said.
“But I don’t think that legislating an age or access to social media is really going to do much good for those the legislation is meant to protect.”
Under the law, platforms such as TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram will be liable for up to 50 million Australian dollars, roughly $45 million US, for systemic failures to prevent children under 16 from having accounts.
Platforms have one year to consider how they might implement the ban before penalties are applied.
Maddalena said enforcing such a ban would be difficult and could have negative consequences.
“When you ban something, it goes underground, and when it goes underground, it becomes both attractive and non-discussed,” she said.
“I’m much more interested in making these technologies topics for discussion.”
-with files from The Associated Press and Maura Forrest in Montreal.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on December 2, 2024.