Australia’s social media ban for children won’t work

I was born in the final years of the baby boom. To my generation of children, a social network was our mothers gossiping over the back fence or at the shops.

But, thanks to a miracle of nature and science, I’m also a father later in life, blessed with a five-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, who is happy, intelligent, and learning fast and precociously about the world around her. She is also, however, happy to be glued to a screen, and can find her way around an iPad and YouTube on my phone. Whether I want her to or not, it won’t be all that long before my daughter discovers social media, especially Instagram and TikTok. She already knows about the internet, and that there is a whole online world out there.

My wife and I are very worried about the cyber world that will soon surround Elizabeth, and how it can become an inexorable and inescapable influence on her life.