There is a growing consensus among parents that social media platforms are places they don’t want their teen children to be. Rather than try to change the platforms themselves, the solution that has emerged is to shut kids out of social media altogether.

On Friday, the federal parliament passed a bill that sets a minimum age of 16 for access to social media sites and requires platforms to take reasonable steps to check the age of users.

Evicted from social media, but many children will find darker corners of the internet. Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

Like many, I find the plan to ban kids problematic. Undoubtedly well intentioned, it gives rise to risks, including some for children. Young people like going online and many use social media to build community, exercise autonomy and find information. Kids will, of course, look for ways to get around a ban, and when they do, they will find themselves in even more depraved places, as platforms will have been liberated from the need to make social media safe for kids.

The algorithms have learnt that the content that keeps users’ attention is often the worst kind of content.

The risks of a ban........

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