Australia is the first country in the world to have introduced a real one digital age: under 16, no social media. From midnight on December 10th, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, will be off-limits to those under 16. A choice that has gone around the world and which, inevitably, divides.
“We shouldn’t be banned from social media. they should teach us how to use them” said a 10-year-old child interviewed by the ABC,in a survey involving 17 thousand Australian teenagers. Shortly after, a 12-year-old girl responded with opposite but equally lucid words: “I don’t think kids should worry so much about this stuff. It’s stealing our childhood.”
Two voices, two true intuitions and in the middle a question that concerns us all: Is education on the medium really enough on its own?
Not a ban against digital, but against a lack of protection
The Australian measure was born within the Online Security Code and involves hundreds of thousands of accounts. Its weight is not just numerical, it is symbolic: for the first time a State openly says that digital environments exist which, due to the way they are constructed, they are not suitable for all ages.
It is not a stance against technology itself, nor an analogical nostalgia, it is rather the recognition of a failure: that of a system that has allowed very powerful platforms to grow without adequate cultural, social and political regulation.
As explained by Marco Gui,media sociologist and founder of Digital pacts, we are faced with a strong – perhaps extreme – response to a real emergency. After twenty years of enthusiasm for the benefits of the Internet, we are experiencing a “return wave”. The smartphone has made the connection permanent, scientific research has highlighted increasingly clear links between intensive use of social media, mental health and learning, especially in young people, and the business models of the platforms, based on capturing attention, have become increasingly aggressive, in the absence of real shared rules.
The real challenge is cultural
The crucial point,however,is not the law itself,it is what will happen around to the law.
In Italy we know well the difference between rules that really change behavior and rules that remain a dead letter. The ban on smoking in public places has become part of our way of life. The minimum age for consent to the processing of personal data, however, is systematically ignored.
The success of Australia’s “digital coming of age” will depend on its ability to transform itself into a shared, internalized choice, perceived as protection and not as an imposition. Somthing families do to protect, not to obey.
It is indeed no coincidence that, alongside consensus, resistance also emerges: two fifteen-year-olds have already appealed to the High Court, supported by a digital rights group, denouncing the risk of violation of freedom of communication and the possible proliferation of fake profiles. Legitimate objections,which remind us how delicate the boundary between protection and control is.
The deeper problem: the loss of relationships
But perhaps this measure intercepts something even deeper, which goes well beyond social media.
Subtly, almost without making any noise, the fabric of our relationships is falling apart. The OECD tells us that one in ten people have no significant relationships; not only among the elderly, but also among young people and adults. We live lives that are increasingly crowded with interactions and increasingly poor in connections. We communicate continuously, but we meet less and less.
It’s