Ban on under-16s accessing social media in Australia

As the author of A Sleepwalker’s Guide to Social Media (2020) and the forthcoming The Struggle for [User] Experience (2026), Dr Tony Sampson joined BBC Radio 4’s Moral Maze programme this week to debate banning social media.

Listen to the episode 'Should children be banned from social media?' on BBC iPlayer

Here, Dr Sampson, who is a Reader in Digital Communication at Essex Business School, explains his viewpoint.

Risks to having a social media ban

There’s an understandable wave of anxiety (and a degree of moral panic) behind the current ban on under-16s accessing social media in Australia. However, as someone whose work is deeply critical of platform business models and targets the “experiential capitalism” driving much online harm, I don’t agree with the ban.

Not because I think social media is harmless, but because the pro-ban debate often misunderstands how attention works and how digital media cultures form. I also think banning it risks making social media even more tempting and potentially harmful.

There are several reasons why I take this position.

Media effects

Yes, doom scrolling has negative psychological effects. It’s a behaviour shaped by design choices that keep us swiping long past the point of diminishing returns. But I’m skeptical of neuroscientific claims that social media "rewires brainwave activity" and directly effects attention spans.

The brain is shaped by environments, for sure, but plasticity is not a simple input-output mechanism. Attention emerges from an interplay of brains, environments, histories, social conditions, and media technologies. If our brains are changing, it’s not solely due to screens or social media; it’s due to platform business models that structure attention, extract value from user experience and crowd out more flourishing online experiences.

Media regulation, not prohibition

Under-16s are certainly at risk. But banning social media will not protect young people who will work around restrictions with VPNs, shared logins or burner accounts. Push a cultural activity underground and it becomes more compelling, secretive, and socially risky. You don’t make something less attractive by forbidding it; you make it rebellious.

While Silicon Valley platforms have become too powerful to control (and increasingly unwilling to act morally) this is precisely why national and international regulation must become far more joined up. We’ve lived through decades of deregulation driven by digitisation, leaving global platforms with unprecedented reach and minimal accountability.

This is not sustainable.

Social media is a media industry like film, TV, radio or newspapers, yet it has grown with almost no editorial responsibility. The answer is not prohibition but regulation: clearer rules, enforced transparency, proper content governance and a shift away from extractive logics that treat user attention as raw material.

A ban avoids the hard questions. Regulation forces us to confront them, such as how platform algorithms function.

Media literacy

Media education is often derided as shallow, but media literacy is essential. Understanding how algorithms work is crucial for grasping how attention is farmed. Emotions also figure writ large in social media, so we need better education of the senses. We all need to learn how to discern between commodified emotional experiences and what comprises a truly flourishing online experience.

That’s where the struggle for user experience really begins.