<
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/08/06/australia-completely-loses-the-plot-plans-to-ban-kids-from-watching-youtube/>
"Last fall, heavily influenced by Jonathan Haidt’s extremely problematic book,
Australia announced that it was banning social media for everyone under the age
of 16. This was already a horrifically stupid idea—the kind of policy that
sounds reasonable in a tabloid headline but crumbles under any serious
scrutiny. Over and over again studies have found that social media is neither
good nor bad for most teens. It’s also good for some—especially those who are
in need of finding community or like-minded individuals. It is, also, not so
great for a small group of kids, though the evidence there suggests that it’s
worst for those dealing with untreated mental health issues, which causes them
to use social media as an alternative to help.
There remains little to no actual evidence that an outright ban will be
helpful, and plenty to suggest it will be actively harmful to many.
But now Australia has decided to double down on the stupid, announcing that
YouTube will be included in the ban. This escalation reveals just how
disconnected from reality this entire policy framework has become. We’ve gone
from “maybe we should protect kids from social media” to “let’s ban children
from accessing one of the world’s largest repositories of educational content.”
Australia said on Wednesday it will add YouTube to sites covered by its
world-first ban on social media for teenagers, reversing an earlier decision
to exempt the Alphabet-owned video-sharing site and potentially setting up a
legal challenge.
The decision came after the internet regulator urged the government last
week to overturn the YouTube carve-out, citing a survey that found 37% of
minors reported harmful content on the site.
This is painfully stupid and ignorant. The claim that 37% of minors reported
seeing harmful content is also… meaningless without a lot more context and
details. What counts as “harmful”? A swear word? Political content their
parents disagree with? A video explaining evolution? What was the impact? Is
this entirely self-reported? What controls were there? Just saying 37% is kind
of meaningless without the details.
This is vibes-based policymaking dressed up in statistics. You could probably
get 37% of kids to report “harmful content” on
PBS Kids if you asked them
vaguely enough. The fact that Australia’s internet regulator is using this kind
of methodological garbage to reshape internet policy tells you everything you
need to know about how seriously they’ve thought this through."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
