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If there is one policy of the Luxon-led government that unites the political left and right, it would be banning phones from schools.
Now for the next step.
Can the National-Act-New Zealand First administration summon the courage to ban social media accounts for under-16s? Australia is moving. Its legislation, expected to pass this year, would be world leading.
Others have moved, but not quite so comprehensively. France has a law requiring parental consent for social media-users under 15. In Texas, social media users under 18 need to have consent from their parents.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is clear that action is needed. “Social media is doing social harm to our young Australians,” Albanese said recently. “The safety and mental health of our young people has to be a priority.”
This is not a partisan issue in Australia. The move has the support of the federal Opposition and the states and territories, too. Its proposed ban includes teenagers who already have a social media account. That means social media-users who are under 16 when the ban comes in will be booted off the platforms and, under this legislation, it will be up to social media companies to block under-16s - not parents.
The ban, which would take effect a year after legislation is passed, seems likely to capture a broad range of players: Snapchat, X, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook and probably YouTube, too. It might also apply to gaming platforms such as Roblox.
Australia has shown more courage than most in taking on the tech titans, who are emerging as a super elite of wealth and power, with torchbearers like Elon Musk who is set to play a key role in Trump 2.0.
In fact, Australia took on Musk over the failure of X to remove videos of a terrorist attack in Sydney from the platform. Australia was also years ahead of New Zealand when it moved, in 2021, to make Google and Meta pay for news content.
There is a strong argument that New Zealand should again follow Australia and ban under-16s from using social media. We know we have a mental health crisis among our young people, and writers such as Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University, argues compellingly that social media is a big factor.
The US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has even said that social media accounts should come with the kind of warning we reserved for cigarettes.
In an op-ed in the New York Times in June, Murthy warned that adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of anxiety and depression symptoms. He said half of teenagers reported that social media made them feel worse about their bodies.
This is how he laid out the position parents find themselves in: “There is no seatbelt for parents to click, no helmet to snap in place, no assurance that trusted experts have investigated and ensured that these platforms are safe for our kids. There are just parents and their children, trying to figure it out on their own, pitted against some of the best product engineers and most well-resourced companies in the world.”
Of course, the tech titans will push back, as they have in Australia. They argue that the mobile app store providers should put age restrictions on their products rather than social media companies. They claim it’s too hard to implement an age verification regime and that the technology isn’t quite ready yet.
It’s true this will create challenges. To ban the under-16s the tech companies will have to ensure all users have age verification, which could cause headaches for adult users. But to claim that the tech challenge is too big is a laughable response. These are the people who love to remind us that they are the smartest guys in the room. They can figure it out.
But what if they leave New Zealand? Good riddance, in my view.
Google has already warned it will stop promoting New Zealand news content and rip up its existing deals with newsrooms if the government goes ahead with the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill, which forces tech giants to pay news organisations for their content.
It seems our government is now wavering on that one.
Are we just supposed to keep scrolling while these tech companies replace local media with an algorithm that promotes division, discord and misinformation, and rots our kids’ brains along the way?
Luxon won praise across the political spectrum for his phone ban. He has appointed the first ever Minister for Mental Health. He can make his mark again by keeping our kids off social media until they are 16.
Guyon Espiner is an investigative journalist and presenter at RNZ, who hosts TV and radio interview show 30 with Guyon Espiner. He writes a fortnightly column for listener.co.nz
