Should parents outside Australia adopt the country’s social media ban? Our kids may thank us later

Kara Alaimo is a professor of communication at Fairleigh Dickinson University and teaches parents, students and teachers how to manage screentime. Her book “Over the Influence: Why Social Media Is Toxic for Women and Girls — And How We Can Take It Back” was published in 2024.

On Wednesday, December 10, Australian kids are waking up to a world that was once inconceivable: They don’t have social media anymore. The country is the first to prohibit social apps for children under age 16. The ban on 10 platforms includes TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, Facebook, X and Reddit.

If parents outside of Australia adopt the same rules, our kids will thank us later.

That’s because social media appears to be making our kids less healthy and happy. I recently joined leading researchers around the globe in writing a consensus statement about what we know social media and smartphones are doing to kids. We overwhelmingly agreed that the literature shows that, over the past 20 years as they became ubiquitous, adolescent mental health declined.

What’s more, phones and social media apps can interfere with kids’ sleep and are correlated with addiction and attention problems. For girls, they may be tied to perfectionism, body dissatisfaction and the risk of predators and sexual harassment.