ON THE HEELS of Australia’s recent move to ban those under the age of 16 from social media, our government is looking into protections against online harm that could be implemented in Ireland.

We have already seen many other attempts to protect society from the harms of social media.

In Europe, we have attempted to clamp down on disinformation shared on social media through the regulation of moderation for the largest social media networks with our Digital Services Act.

Countries such as China have created their own social media companies while banning foreign competitors, in order to ensure that their government maintain tight control of the message and culture.

But foundational to all of these attempts to protect people is a restriction on individual speech and behaviour, which inevitably causes significant backlash among sections of the population who condemn these measures as political censorship and a restriction of individual freedom, playing into fears of a loss of control.

These tech barons are counting on many elected representatives being older and thus being, the companies assume, less tech-savvy, which they see as an advantage for their tech lobbying efforts.

This makes it all the more important for those of us who have grown up entirely in the digital age to consistently highlight the way that these toxic systems on social media function, and specifically to identify the many harms that recommender algorithms cause.

That may sound hyperbolic to someone who is hearing the concept for the first time, and this abstract change is a lot less politically sexy than the much more visible and tangible crises we currently face, such as the housing crisis or climate crisis. But it is interlinked with every single issue we’ve experienced in recent years, and with the very functioning of our democracy itself.

Until about 2014, social media companies empowered users to choose what we wanted to see. We would connect with or follow friends or those who made content we wanted to see, and all the content we chose to see would be visible on a chronological feed, displaying the most recent content first.

It was a silly and somewhat whimsical place compared to........

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