Australia is planning a total ban on social media for children under 16 years old. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese argues that it is the only way to protect vulnerable children from the demonstrable harm that social media can do. This has sparked another round of debates about what to do, if anything, about social media.

When social media first appeared, there wasn’t much discussion or recognition about the potential downsides. Many viewed it as one way to fulfill the promise of the web – to connect people digitally. It was also viewed as the democratization of mass communication. Now anyone could start a blog, for example, and participate in public discourse without having to go through editors and gatekeepers or invest a lot of capital. And all of this was true. Here I am, two decades later, using my personal blog to do just that.

But the downsides also quickly became apparent. Bypassing gatekeepers also means that the primary mechanism for quality control (for what it was worth) was also gone. There are no journalistic standards on social media, no editorial policy, and no one can get fired for lying, spreading misinformation, or making stuff up. While legacy media still exists, social media caused a realignment in how most people access information.

In the social media world we have inadvertently created, the people with the most power are arguably the tech giants. This has consolidated a lot of power in the hands of a few billionaires with little oversight or regulations. Their primary tool for controlling the flow of information is computer algorithms, which are designed to maximize engagement. You need to get people to click and to stay on your website so that you can feed them ads. This also created a new paradigm in which the user (that’s you) is the product – apps and websites are used to gather information about users which are then sold to other corporations, largely for marketing purposes. In some cases, like the X platform, and individual can favor their own content and perspective, essentially turning a platform into a propaganda machine. Sometimes an authoritarian government controls the platform, and can push public discourse in whatever direction they want.

Perhaps worse, if the only feedback loop for algorithms is engagement, then this creates an interesting psychological experiment. What drives engagement is extremism, outrage, and reinforcing prejudices. This has resulted in a few derivative phenomena, including echochambers. It became trivial, and almost automatic, for spaces to emerge on social media that reinforce a particular world view. Those who do not comply are deemed “trolls” and are banned. Rather than having a shared reality of core facts, people are largely isolated in cocoons of ideological purity. The result was increasing division – each half of the country (politically speaking) cannot imagine how the other half can possibly believe what they do.

In addition getting people to engage meant feeding them increasingly radical content, which had the result of radicalizing a lot of people. This resulted in the rise of lunatic ideas like flat-eatherism, and conspiracy theories like QAnon. It also supercharged the spread of misinformation, and provided a convenient mechanism for the deliberate spread of disinformation. Bad actors and authoritarian governments quickly seized upon this opportunity.

There is also another layer here -mental health. Obsessively engaging online results in fomo, bullying, low self-esteem, and depression. This is exacerbated by the fact that the layer of protection afforded by social media allows for psychopaths, predators, and other bad actors to roam freely.

So I can understand the feeling that by allowing young children to engage on social media is like throwing our children to the wolves, with predictable negative effects. But the question remains – what do we do about it? Australia is planning an experiment of their own, taking a bold step to outright ban social media use for children under 16. There is already a lot of pushback against this idea. In an open letter from 100 academics, they argue that banning is a blunt tool, and that it will leave children more vulnerable. They will not learn the skills to be able to navigate social media, they argue. They suggest that other methods would be better, without getting into too much detail about what those methods might be. The details of the banning also have to be worked out – how will it be enforced?

It is a genuine dilemma. There is no real solution, only different trade-offs. It is certainly worth having the conversation about what the options and trade-off might be. Doing nothing is one option – just let the experiment play itself out, with the idea that society will adapt. While I think this will happen to some degree, we may not like where we end up. My problem with this approach is that it assumes that things will play out organically. Rather, powerful actors (tech giants, powerful corporations, and governments) will exploit the system to their own advantage and to the detriment of the public. We may have just provided the tools for authoritarian governments to exert ultimate control over society. It may not be a coincidence that democracies are in retreat around the world.

But even without an authoritarian thumb on the scale, misinformation seems to have a significant advantage in the world of social media. Perhaps even worse, we seem to be heading for a world in which truth is irrelevant. I spend a lot of time on TikTok, for example, trying to spread a little science and critical thinking. The platform has lots of good science communication on hit, and lots of wholesome entertainment. But it is also overwhelmed with nonsense, including misinformation and disinformation. But perhaps the dominant trend is for something that is not so much misinformation but that is completely unconcerned with reality. Many videos are purely performative, to the point that I cannot figure out if the person making the video actually believes anything they say. It’s as if it doesn’t matter – it’s all about engagement. The very concept that one factual claim may be more reliable than an opposing claim seems anathema. It’s all opinion, and all that matters is clicks. Any argument otherwise is immediately dismissed as a conspiracy, or mere elitism.

We may already be living in the post-truth hellscape that critics predicted social media would lead to. I don’t think a ban is likely to be the solution, but I welcome the experiment. If Australia enacts the ban, we need to pay close attention to what results. Even if there are some net positive outcomes, it is not likely to be the only needed solution. We need to start talking more seriously about what measures should be taken to reign in some of the worse aspects of social media.  Also AI is about to supercharge everything, giving even more power spreaders of misinformation. I liken to an industry that is dumping tons of toxic substances into the environment. I don’t think we should just sit back and see what happens.