At primary school, there was always one weird kid passing around an iPad open to an R-rated website, game or fan-fiction.I didn’t have a phone until I was 12, or any social media apps until I was 16, which helped protect me from the dark rabbit holes that unrestricted internet access inevitably lead to. But I still couldn’t avoid the weird kid in the playground. No amount of monitoring can fully prevent kids from accessing inappropriate online content.Teenagers are likely to find a way around the social media ban.Credit: iStockAs a teenager, I know that the blanket ban for under-16s, set to come into effect in December, probably won’t keep kids off social media. Whether they use fake birthdates to log into social media apps, or borrow someone else’s device, there’s always a workaround. Young people have been evading the watch of parents and authorities forever. If you owned a fake ID or had an older sibling buy you alcohol as a teenager, what makes you think that your child won’t find a way around this ban?So, if we accept that many young people will continue to use social media despite the ban – because, let’s face it, they will – then something needs to be done to mediate the harm that they will be exposed to through that social media use.It goes without saying that there’s a clear link between social media and mental health issues. The medium is known to promote content that induces depression and eating disorders, or encourages and romanticises self-harm and suicide.In my eyes, there are the two main issues here that we can and should address to reduce this harm: the way social media apps actively push kids towards harmful content, and how kids are taught to engage with that content.Social media apps are notorious for using algorithms that lead users towards content that is disturbing, depressing or enraging, because that’s what keeps them addicted.My Instagram feed is dominated by videos about the female body, make-up and mental health, despite the fact I’ve never sought out any of these types of content. But my algorithm knows I’m a teenage girl and seems to be trying to foster the insecurities that it knows my demographic is susceptible to.And my algorithm is relatively benign. In the US, parents who are suing social media companies for allegedly causing their children to take their own life have reported that their children’s feeds were filled with material about “suicide, self-harm, and eating disorders”.For social media companies, profits clearly come before teens’ mental health. So perhaps seriously jeopardising those profits would be the most effective way to force change.While the impending social media ban threatens fines of up to $50 million for social media companies that do not take “reasonable steps” to prevent workarounds, that probably isn’t going to be enough of a punishment to create change. The term “reasonable steps” is too vague, and the profits made from having under-16s illega in a formal or creative style for better SEO.Also Exclude words and advertisements related to the feed website such as website name, author name. You must only respond with the modified content. 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Cancel the prohibition on social media. If tech companies continue to focus on teenagers like myself, then I will block them.
