Social media is a cancer for kids. Australia is trying to prevent it.

I am not a believer in bans or closures, as I demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic when I pushed in the summer of 2020 for schools to remain open, warning, along with Danny Benjamin of Duke University, that school closures caused more damage to socialization and learning than any possible unproven benefit in terms of virus control. 

That said, I must admit social media gives me real pause when it comes to bans, because unrestricted use is leading to higher rates of anxiety, depression, bullying and poorer self-esteem across the world. Keep in mind, social media is most often a dangerous, misleading product, with no alternative information sources for many of our young.

As former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy wrote in an advisory in 2023, children and adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of mental health problems, coupled with the fact that this exposure makes them

visit website