Banning kids from social media won’t solve anything – Netsafe

By RNZ

Calls to ban children under 16 from social media are a distraction from the real issues facing young people on the platforms, according to Netsafe.

The Australian prime minister is vowing to get kids off their devices and onto the footy field by introducing a minimum social media age of 16.

His New Zealand counterpart has said he is “up for looking” at the issue. But Netsafe chief executive officer Brent Carey believes a ban would just push any problems underground.

“Young people are missing from the conversation, and this is largely the online spaces,” he told RNZ’s Checkpoint on Thursday.

“We leave our young people at the age of 14 to babysit other people, or they can be left on their own by their parents, but we won’t be able to let them have Snapchat with their friends? It just doesn’t sort of ring true with how we treat young adults.”

The New Zealand Government earlier this year banned students from using cellphones in schools. Carey said students got around it by accessing social media on other devices, such as desktop computers, driving unwanted behaviours “underground”.

“And also, a lot of young people rely on their social media spaces to get support, and if you are from the marginalised or vulnerable community, that is really important – and so access to mental health services might suffer as well, as a result of the ban.”

He said the real issue was digital literacy: “Looking at our curriculum, bringing in that technology curriculum and making people think critically about their spaces and places that they are engaging in.

“And also, that it is really about the behaviours – what do we want to see our young people display when they are interacting with one another? And that is why at sort of age 14, it is really easier to have those conversations as a parent than perhaps with a 16-year-old who might think that they know everything – more than their parents.”

He said previous Netsafe research, specifically on body image, showed youngsters were “overwhelmingly still positive about online spaces”.

“They want to demand more accountability from the platforms, but generally they are finding the peer support that they need. And so I think it is important for parents to also get on the platforms and understand which ones the young people are on.

“Snapchat is really young, it is 13 to 24 and a lot of parents might not be on that. So it’s learning alongside the young person around what spaces they are in.”

As for interacting with older people, Carey said caregivers should utilise parental controls and make sure their children were aware of tools such as blocking people.

“It’s important that [parents] are monitoring what the young person is doing. It’s all part of the conversation piece that needs to happen between parents and their young person.”

Carey said the platforms themselves, however, needed to do more to make sure their content was age-appropriate.

Most platforms required people to be at least 13 but Carey said that was not always enforced, another reason parents should keep up with what their children were doing online.

“Kids under 13 will get kicked off those platforms if they are not age appropriate – so there are often times where they are blocked or banned or refused.

“The main thing is that you know, you are having these conversations about when it is appropriate for them to be on a platform.”

Labour leader Chris Hipkins was also interested in a social media ban.

“I’m really interested in seeing what the Aussies are doing, I’m open to backing that, I want to see evidence first,” he told RNZ’s Morning Report.

Sign up to The Daily H, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.