READ MORE: Under-16 social media ban: Three pain points as Australia grapples with how to implement it
But beneath the concern lies a familiar moral panic – this time dressed in digital clothes.
And if you’re tempted to cheer the move, pause and ask: has banning expression ever really worked?
From Bomont to the ’gram: cultural expression finds a way Cast your mind back to Footloose , where the town of Bomont outlawed dancing. Officials believed it would corrupt the youth.
Cue Kevin Bacon’s airborne defiance. The film wasn’t just a dance movie. It was an allegory for control vs. expression.
The kids danced anyway, behind barns and under streetlights, because expression doesn’t vanish when banned.
It goes underground. It gets louder.
Now trade the barn for a bedroom. The boom box for an iPhone.
The leaping teenager for a kid in Rangiora nailing a TikTok trend. Today’s dance floor isn’t physical – it’s digital.
And it’s where youth culture, identity, and connection play out in real time.
To ban social media for under-16s is to throw a velvet rope across that dance floor.
And just like Bomont’s ill-fated dance ban, it won’t work.
Worse, it could make things even more dangerous.
Social media as a stage for identity Social media, for all its flaws, is where young people express themselves.
It’s where a 15-year-old queer kid in a rural town finds community.
Where Māori or Pasifika teens stay connected to diaspora.
Where creative sparks catch fire and self-worth is explored, even if it’s filtered and looped.
Yes, there are valid concerns: online harassment, performative pressure, and dark algorithmic holes.
But outright bans ignore a crucial truth : these spaces are also sites of growth, exploration, solidarity, and joy.
Take them away and what’s left? Silence? Shame? Secrecy?
Remember Dirty Dancing? Telling Baby she couldn’t dance didn’t protect her.
It isolated her. She still danced.
The point isn’t that these kids are going to post regardless.
The point is that with a ban, we may rob them of guidance when we force them into the shadows.
Social media is a platform for young kids to learn and explore themselves. Photo / 123rf The myth of the “clean ban” The logistics of a ban are a bureaucratic fever dream. Age verification online is a mess.
You’d need facial scans, photo IDs, or invasive data collection.
Turning digital playgrounds into surveillance zones.
That’s a privacy nightmare waiting to happen and likely a breach of both New Zealand’s Privacy Act and our obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Even if you could technically pull off a ban, you’d still hit a bigger wall: cultural and social harm .
Young people don’t experience the internet in isolation.
It’s a layered terrain: educational, creative, emotional.
Denying them access cuts off support networks, essential information, and digital literacy opportunities.
That’s not safety. It’s a slow suffocation of autonomy.
Ban the bullies, not the teens.
We don’t need another blunt instrument. What we need is a scalpel.
A nuanced, rights-based approach that tackles harm without cutting off access:
Fix the platforms, don’t punish the users. Teach critical literacy, not censorship. Strengthen legislation, like the Harmful Digital Communications Act . Invest in mental health services, not just firewalls. Support community-led moderation, especially for vulnerable groups. Let’s ban bad actors, unsafe algorithms, and exploitative data harvesting.
But let’s not throw every 15-year-old with a camera into the digital wilderness.
What are we really afraid of? Some of this is generational unease. There is discomfort with a new kind of performance.
When we were teens, we copied Flashdance in living rooms and passed mix tapes under desks.
We mimicked Molly Ringwald or longed to be as misunderstood as Winona Ryder.
Our self-expression lived in Walkmans and diaries. Today, it lives in Reels and Shorts.
But the impulse is the same: to say, this is who I am.
The truth is, banning social media for young people says more about adult anxiety than adolescent risk.
It reflects a desire to control what we don’t fully understand, to restore a world that no longer exists.
But that world was never free of harm, it just wore shoulder pads and listened to vinyl.
We cannot legislate our way back to innocence. We can only prepare the next generation to live well in the world they’ve inherited.
A final spin on the dance floor Shared cultural moments are not always born on stages or in cinemas.
Sometimes they’re filmed in bedrooms at 2am, stitched together with audio clips and awkward dances, and posted with trembling hands.
And just like the songs we once weren’t allowed to hear, young people will find a way to play them.
The question isn’t how we stop them.
The real question is: what kind of country are we asking them to grow up in?
One that bans the dance, or one that teaches the steps?
