By Byron Kaye
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Since Meta whistleblower Frances Haugen aired internal emails in 2021 showing the tech giant knew of social media’s mental health impacts on teenagers, world leaders have agonised over how to curb the technology’s addictive pull on young minds.
Even a 2023 recommendation by the U.S. surgeon general to put health warnings on social media, blaming it for what he called a teenage mental health crisis, could not help lawmakers from Florida to France navigate resistance on grounds of free speech, privacy and the limits of age-checking technology.
The spark that ended the stalemate was when the wife of the leader of Australia’s second-smallest state read The Anxious Generation, a 2024 bestseller criticising social media by U.S. social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, and told her husband to take action.
“I remember precisely the moment that she said to me ‘you’ve got to read this book and you’ve got to do something about it’,” South Australia Premier Peter Malinauskas told reporters in Adelaide on Friday, a day after the country’s federal parliament passed a nationwide social media ban for youths under 16.
“I didn’t reasonably anticipate it would take on so quickly,” he added.
The snowballing of Malinauskas’s personal quest to restrict youth access to social media in his state, which represents just 7% of Australia’s 27 million population, to the world’s first national ban took just six months.
The speed underscores the depth of concern in the Australian electorate over the issue. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is due to hold an election in early 2025.
An Australian government YouGov survey found that 77% of Australians back the under-16 social media ban, up from 61% in August prior to the government’s official announcement. Only 23% oppose the measure.
“It all originated here,” said Rodrigo Praino, a professor of politics and public policy at South Australia’s Flinders University.
“The federal government including the prime minister understood immediately that that was a problem that needed to be solved (and) best addressed if it’s done nationwide. Allowing kids to indiscriminately use social media has become an issue globally.”
Chance also played part in the transformation of Malinauskas’s state action to global regulatory prototype.
When the father of four answered the call from his wife in May, Facebook and Instagram owner Meta had two months earlier said it would stop paying content royalties to news outlets globally, potentially triggering an Australian online copyright law.