Why Australia Can Protect Its Kids — And We Can’t
It’s not rocket science. Social media causes all kinds of problems for kids ranging from suicide to self harm to eating disorders to depression, anxiety, loneliness, addiction, bullying and so many others – especially for younger teenagers. Even the platforms themselves don’t seriously dispute this — they just point the finger at societal problems writ large rather than their own actions and culpability. The problem is the same in Australia as it is in Atlanta as it is in Anchorage. The difference is, Australia did something about it.
Australia’s parliament just passed legislation banning the use of social media for kids under the age of 16. The bill cleared both chambers overwhelmingly and imposes fines of $50 million (Australian; $32 million USD) for platforms who violate the new laws. And with a ban now in effect, the Australian government has the leverage to demand better policies and standards from the platforms if they ever want access to users younger than 16 again.
A recent YouGov poll found that 77% of Australians support the new law and 87% of Australians support even tougher penalties for social media platforms that violate the law. What would support be like here in the U.S. for a similar law? Probably about the same. Why? Because parents everywhere are terrified of what their kids are both finding and doing on the internet. As soon as Covid officially merged school life and online life, parents lost all control. They need help — that’s the point of having a government in the first place.
So why can’t we protect kids here in the U.S.? The answer, as always, is politics. Australia has compulsory voting. If you don’t vote, you pay a fine. As a result, the electorate is far more representative of the population as a whole, unlike here where because the vast majority of elections are decided in the primaries thanks to gerrymandering, and, because primary turnout is typically 10-15%, the electorate skews way towards the extremes.
With low primary turnout, powerful special interests like social media platforms — Meta, Twitter, YouTube, Snap — can easily scare members of Congress into sitting on their hands and doing nothing.1 The threat of a seven figure independent expenditure campaign is enough to scare virtually any incumbent into obedience. Which is why nothing critical ever changes here, whether the issue is social media, guns, immigration or a dozen other issues.2
Now, compulsory voting will never fly in the U.S. and it’s not worth trying. But making voting a lot safer and easier by allowing people to vote securely from their phones would dramatically increase primary turnout, taking power away from the ideologues who currently call the shots and making it far more difficult for the special interests — the Metas and Twitters of the world — to intimidate legislators into doing nothing.
We don’t have to live like this. We don’t have to live with a dysfunctional, corrupt, polarized government. But we also are never going to make politicians more decent, more honest, more noble, more willing to risk their next election just to do the right thing. It’s not who they are.3 Banging our heads against the wall and hoping they’ll magically become better people never works.
If we can align their political incentives with our policy needs, then politicians can do the right thing. That comes from higher turnout. When politicians represent just a sliver of voters, their political incentives are to do nothing that makes a powerful special interest upset. When they represent a much broader cross section, their incentives change — and they become more aligned with the best interests of the population as a whole.
That’s how you get things done — things like protecting our kids from the toxic cesspool of social media. Australian parents don’t love their kids any more than we love ours. So why are we letting our kids suffer? We don’t have to.
TikTok is a propaganda arm of the Chinese government and it took years to pass legislation to require divestment of Chinese ownership and the outcome is still somewhat in question.
There has been real progress at the state level towards protecting kids online. The reason is because states are so overwhelmingly slanted towards party control by one side or the other, when an issue gains enough momentum, the ability of the platforms to bully an entire party is less and a bill can pass. However, this is the one positive exception to otherwise disastrous one-party control in cities and states across the country.
Yes, of course, there are exceptions. A few probably came to your mind right away. Now spend the next 10 hours on this and see if you get past ten fingers. Let me know if you do.