Zuru co-founder Anna Mowbray on why she’s keeping her kids off phones and backing a ban

Zuru co-founder Anna Mowbray is standing firmly behind B416's campaign to restrict social media use for young people.

As the social media ban debate heats up, parents are making difficult choices around their children’s use of technology. Zuru co-founder Anna Mowbray is part of parent-led lobby group, B416, urging the Government to ban social media access for younger Kiwis. As a mother, Mowbray is unnerved by the direction social media use for young people is taking, even taking the step of not allowing her five children to own phones.

“I have a lot of conviction within my own family unit, but I know that’s a luxury,” Anna Mowbray says when she speaks to the Weekend Herald over Zoom.

Mowbray exudes energy when talking about the harm technology is causing young people and she believes New Zealand is falling behind other developed countries when it comes to regulation.

It has led to her decision to prevent her own five children, part of a large, blended family she shares with former All Black Ali Williams, from having mobile phones until age 15 or 16.

That decision for the family – her eldest child is 13 years old and her youngest is eight – has not been an easy one and comes with certain challenges.

“I still found myself at 42 getting trapped into the dopamine hit that comes with social media."

It means Mowbray doesn’t have the same instant point of contact that other parents do with their children when they are away from home.

She says her eldest child is probably the only student in his year group at boarding school without a phone.

“I do believe in the value of it long term. I just deeply want my children to have to connect, to have to ask for help and get support, to need to go to the office and pick up the landline to call Mum and Dad,” Mowbray says.

“To be honest, the kids do not push back.”

The recent selection of two digital harm bills from Parliament’s biscuit tin means the House will soon face debate around technology and the rights of individuals.

Act MP Laura McClure’s bill to criminalise sexually explicit ‘deepfake’ images was drawn on Thursday along with National MP Catherine Wedd’s bill to deny access to most social media platforms for under-16s.

Act MP Laura McClure showing an AI generated deepfake nude photo of herself in the House.

The high-profile B416 group, backed by other prominent businesswomen including Herald columnist Cecilia Robinson, is pressuring the Government to enforce the ban. It argues teenagers over 16 will be better equipped to handle the addictive elements of social media as their brains are further developed.

However, on the other side of the debate, there are vocal critics, including the Act Party, who argue a blanket social media ban will be ineffective and age-verification will be too difficult for the Government to impose on young people.

Victoria University media and communications lecturer Dr Alex Beattie says the proposed social media ban is regulating young people rather than holding tech companies accountable.

Beattie believes the ban in its current form is being stoked by “fear” and a misunderstanding of social media, rather than being evidence-based.

“Parents are concerned about changing norms and this perception that young people can’t communicate face-to-face or answer the phone and are glued to their devices.

“This is part of what we call a moral panic and is less about evidence-based harm and more about changing morals or norms.”

Dr Alex Beattie says a social media ban is placing restrictions on young people instead of forcing tech companies to change.

The most recent OECD data from 2018 showed that Aotearoa youth were using digital devices 42 hours per week on average, compared to 35 hours globally. However, Auckland University of Technology (AUT) studies showed further increases in screen time since then, with a spike during the Covid pandemic.

Earlier this week, Whangaparāoa College principal Steve McCracken said his school would be spending $300,000 a year on extra counselling support for students due to a rise in mental health-related issues caused by social media.

In an open letter published in the Herald this month, Sacred Heart College principal Patrick Walsh, who has been a school principal for more than 20 years, said the reality was that through social media, the normalisation of harm was now occurring for young people.

Students could be exposed to bullying, sexting, addiction to gaming, sleep deprivation, anxiety and sexualised violence on social media platforms.

“Many young people tell us they’re on their phones until 3am, fuelled by energy drinks, unable to switch off,” Walsh wrote.

“They arrive at school exhausted, disengaged, and withdrawn. They’re living in a parallel universe – constantly scrolling, constantly stimulated, yet ironically isolated."

In Mowbray’s eyes, children are sacrificing time spent on outdoor play and vital social interactions for multiple hours glued to screens.

She is concerned with the way social media algorithms can serve up unmoderated, sexually explicit or violent content to young people.

When her youngest child came home from school after another student showed her a video of the Charlie Kirk assassination, it alarmed her.

“How is that good for society? How is that good for that child? In no world do I see that as being a fair way to raise a child when they don’t know what they’re about to see ... because the algorithm has delivered that content,” she says.

An Auckland teacher said it was distressing to hear how many of her students had watched Kirk’s death online, with some of the children finding it difficult to focus on normal lessons afterwards.

The United States Surgeon General’s Advisory in 2023 cited “growing concerns” with the effects of social media on youth mental health.

The report found “those who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of poor mental health” including depression and anxiety.

Thinking back on her own childhood near Cambridge, Mowbray has memories of sitting by the window at home lacking entertainment and having to use her imagination to find ways to entertain herself.

“I grew up as a country kid in a very close, tight-knit family where we heavily valued outdoor play.”

Nick Mowbray, Anna Mowbray and Mat Mowbray, founders of billion-dollar toy company Zuru.

She thinks being forced to problem-solve her way out of boredom influenced her career path as a businesswoman. Mowbray co-founded Zuru, a Hong Kong–based toy company, alongside her brothers Matt and Nick Mowbray.

The National Business Review’s 2024 Rich List estimated the combined net worth of the brothers to be $20 billion.

In 2023, Anna Mowbray stepped away from the company to begin her own venture, a jobseeker marketplace called Zeil.

Mowbray’s upbringing involved a lot of time spent in nature, riding horses and playing sports meant she wanted to give that to her own children.

“I’m increasingly concerned with what we’re seeing in the escalated pace young people are being drawn away from the real world into a virtual one.”

Beattie says banning young people risks forcing them to relocate to other darker areas of the internet, and the current proposal places social media companies into one category rather than differentiating between apps such as WhatsApp and TikTok.

“If you’re queer and you live in a small rural town or are an immigrant and haven’t been in New Zealand for that long, you might be a little more dependent on social media connections,” he says.

“That’s the only space where you’re seen for who you are.”

Mowbray is aware that being able to implement a restriction around phone-use for her kids is a privilege, as it requires parents to have the available time to devote to enforcing limitations.

Her involvement in B416, she says, comes from a place of wanting to help other children whose parents might be “working two jobs” and will not have the capacity to enforce regulation without an overall ban in place.

“The inequality and the divide here is what is most concerning to me. This is not about my own children; I will protect them,” she says.

Mowbray also chose to quit Instagram and Facebook after finding herself caught up in a cycle of comparison online.

“I still found myself at 42 getting trapped into the dopamine hit that comes with social media. I found, you know, I would post on social media to get the gratification of likes,” she explains.

She was tired of the endless scrolling, false sense of connection and unwarranted negative feelings it brought about, and she wanted to experience what teens might go through if they were made to withdraw from social media.

At first, she found her muscle memory was hardwired to reach for her phone in the evenings to open Instagram. She craved the external validation of likes and comments from posting and wondered about posts from her friends she could be missing out on.

After 10 days off the apps that feeling disappeared and, in its place, she discovered something more peaceful.

“It’s allowed me to get back to enjoying life, loving life, trying to be the best mother and friend I can be as well as the best leader and support person.

“Rather than worrying about how I’m showing up externally and how much engagement I’m getting ... I now get to read more, and I’ve got more time.”

She wants her own children to enjoy the same feeling of peace and be free from phone addiction.

When Mowbray tested her 13-year-old son by asking him if he wanted a phone for Christmas he said “no”.

Eva de Jong is a reporter covering general news for the New Zealand Herald, Weekend Herald and Herald on Sunday. She was previously a multimedia journalist for the Whanganui Chronicle, covering health stories and general news.

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