Imagine: you’re 15 years old. You’re old enough to get a job. You’re old enough to go to jail. But you’re not old enough to go on Facebook.

That seems to be the vision championed by almost every state premier and now the prime minister, who are calling to bar children under 16 from social media.

What initially seemed like a shortsighted idea floated by Coalition MP David Coleman appears to have gripped the political imagination. It’s not just harmful online content that spreads, it’s also bad policy ideas.

Proposals to ban or limit children’s access to social media aren’t new. Florida has passed one of the most restrictive social media bans in the United States, but even theirs only goes up to 14. Taking a different tack, British campaigners are calling for special mobile phones without social media apps for under 16s. More generally, fears about the impact of technologies upon young people go far back into history.

In Australia, we’ve had this debate before. In 2021 the former Coalition government drafted a bill that would have required platforms to verify the age of their users and obtain parental consent for those under 16. Research conducted afterwards found that parents and carers were initially enthusiastic about the prospect of stronger laws to help protect their children, but this quickly deflated when they........

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