We’ve turned kids into outlaws. It won’t work, but we can still make social media safer for them

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........

© The Sydney Morning Herald