Locking children out of social media until they turn 16 might stop the scrolling, but it won't teach them how to tell fact from fiction once they're back online. That's the concern now being raised in Canberra, where a growing chorus of voices is warning that a ban alone won't equip young Australians to navigate a digital world awash with misinformation, polarisation and radicalisation.
Democracy Counts, a civil society campaign convened by McKinnon to protect democracy in Australia, has told a parliamentary inquiry into the Online Safety Amendment Bill that the government must go further than restricting access, calling for policies that help young people navigate the modern information environment, alongside stronger accountability and regulatory mechanisms underpinned by transparency for regulators and the public.
“A long-term, decades-long policy vision is needed to both redress current harms, and also safeguard from future digital threats,” Democracy Counts campaign director, Tom Mooney, said in a media release. “Without transparency for regulators and the public, none of the policy areas can be meaningfully enacted."
Mooney pointed to a comment made by Squiz Media founder and managing director, Claire Kimball,who referred to the Under-16’s ban as ‘the fence around the swimming pool’, adding that it must be complemented with ‘swimming lessons’ - tools to help children navigate social media more safely.
“To address the harms caused to children, such as misinformation, polarisation and radicalisation, the government needs to consider greater investments in civics education and digital media literacy, as tools to help children navigate the modern information environment more safely,” Mooney said.
Mooney said civics education does more than inform students. It strengthens the democratic system they'll eventually take part in.
“Civics education builds a stronger democracy. It builds a generation that understands our democratic guardrails and can think critically about what they see online," he said. “It equips students with the knowledge and skills necessary to tackle harms of misinformation and support their future civic participation."
Mooney said high-quality civics education needs to go beyond building knowledge through the traditional classroom approach.
“Civics education must not just include teaching but also showing what effective civic participation looks like in practice, like engaging with community," he said. “Younger voters and those on the cusp of voting receive most of their information through social media and are therefore, being fed a diet of highly polarised opinion and outright disinformation."
Democracy Counts is calling for compulsory civics education and media literacy in all Australian schools.
"Young people coming onto the electoral roll should understand how the our democracy works and develop a critical, analytical approach to what they read and see on social media."
The push comes as McKinnon’s State of Australian Democracy report found 85% of Australians support more civics education, adding weight to the campaign's call for schools to be given a bigger role in preparing students for life both on and off the ban's reach.