As the mother of a young girl, who is just at the start of her teen years, the debate about access to social media is one that particularly concerns me.
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Should we, or shouldn't we, seek to ban young people of a certain age from accessing social media in all its platforms.
Personally, I am not a big user of social media. I steer away from posting personal stories and photos on to the various platforms.
I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist (you can have your own opinion on that one) but I am with the boundless research that identifies the dangers as very real. Online bullying for one.
I don't even want to think what my life would have been like, had the internet been around when I was younger (much younger).
I've done some pretty stupid things in my life - no explanation needed - and quite frankly the last thing I'd want is for my life choices splashed 'out there' for everyone to see, and for all time.
That's what our young people are going to have to navigate.
But it's not so much the 'stupid' that I am worried about. It's the influence of others.
According to the National Youth Mental Health Survey from June 2023, one in three young people experience problematic social media use (33%) while the majority of young people believe not enough is being done in terms of regulation and laws surrounding social media (55%). And interestingly, half of young Australians felt it would be nice to disconnect, but worry that they would miss something (51%).
I am hearing a lot about a ban - and in NSW that means children under 16, in other states it's 14 - but how would it be implemented when so many of our kids are already on it? And when it's so easy to get around it (apparently).
I know I have jumped on this bandwagon before; when I challenged all of you to disconnect from your phones for a whole weekend.
But think of it from a young person's perspective. They have grown up with the internet. For them, it's just part of life. So I do wonder if a better approach might be education.
Because this thing called the internet - and so social media - is going nowhere, we need to learn to live with it. Teach our young people from a young age how to be safe. Make them the masters of their own destiny, instead of slaves to it.
But of course that extends to parents as well. We can't just sit back and expect our kids to do all the leg work, or they will be so far ahead of us it will be impossible to catch up.
On that note, enjoy the rest of your weekend.
Fiona Ferguson, editor
