OPINION: An under-16 social media restriction is a necessary first step, not a cure-all.
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A little over a week ago, the Prime Minister announced legislation that would restrict social media accounts for children under 16 and put much greater responsibility on technology companies to protect young people online. Unsurprisingly, I support it.
I don’t think the legislation will be perfect, I don’t think every
child will suddenly disappear from social media and I don’t think an age restriction on its own will solve the broader challenge we have created around technology and childhood. But none of those things are good enough reasons to do nothing.
We know enough now to know the status quo isn’t working. One in three young New Zealanders reportedly spends at least five hours a day on social media.
Parents see the consequences at home, teachers see them in classrooms and health professionals see young people struggling with anxiety, poor sleep, body image, disordered eating and distress.
Young people themselves talk openly about cyberbullying, comparison, addictive design and exposure to violent, sexualised or inappropriate content.
Yet for years we have placed much of the responsibility back on parents: set boundaries, monitor devices, understand every new platform and negotiate screen time.
Of course parents have a responsibility. But there is something fundamentally unbalanced about expecting an individual parent to compete with some of the most sophisticated technology companies in the world, using products designed to capture attention and keep people engaged.
That is why this legislation matters. It starts to shift responsibility back where it belongs.
The under-16 restriction has understandably received most of the attention, but in many ways the creation of an independent online safety regulator is just as important and frankly long overdue.
Platforms would be required to identify and reduce risks to children, with a regulator able to oversee and enforce those obligations. For the first time, New Zealand would have a dedicated mechanism for holding these companies to account.
This is not some fringe policy experiment. At least 25 countries are already considering or implementing age-based social media restrictions, with governments across Europe and Asia moving in the same direction. Australia has already acted and, as you would expect with a world-first policy, implementation has not been perfect.
Some children will find ways around the rules, but expecting 100% compliance is an unreasonable test of whether public policy works.
The obvious comparison is tobacco, although the history is much longer than many people realise.
New Zealand first restricted children’s access to tobacco more than 120 years ago. The Juvenile Smoking Suppression Act 1903 prohibited supplying tobacco to children under 15.
What followed was not one magic intervention but more than a century of progressively stronger regulation: higher age limits, advertising restrictions, smokefree workplaces, bars and restaurants, higher taxes, health warnings, retail display bans and eventually plain packaging.
No single measure ended smoking. Together, over generations, they changed behaviour and eventually changed what society considered normal. Smoking in an office, restaurant or aircraft was once unremarkable. Today it is almost unimaginable.
And importantly, almost every step of that journey was fought.
The tobacco industry did not simply stand by while governments restricted advertising, access, packaging and where people could smoke. The arguments were remarkably familiar: regulation wouldn’t work, people would get around it, personal choice was under threat, businesses would suffer and there would be unintended consequences.
Does any of that sound familiar?
Because we are hearing many of the same arguments about social media restrictions today. Some are legitimate and deserve proper scrutiny. Privacy matters, age assurance needs to work and regulation has to be practical. But we also need to be clear-eyed about who is influencing this debate.
There are people lobbying against restrictions on children’s social media use who themselves have significant youth audiences they monetise.
There are also organisations contributing to this debate that receive funding, sponsorship or support from the very technology companies that would be regulated.
Neither automatically makes their argument wrong, but both should be disclosed. We learnt this lesson through tobacco.
Commercial interests do not get disqualified from the debate, but nor should they be invisible. When we are deciding the rules that protect children, transparency should be the minimum expectation.
That matters because these technology companies know an extraordinary amount about us. They know what we search for, what we watch, what we buy, what keeps us scrolling and the age of the people using their platforms. They know that I am a middle-aged woman with three children.
So I don’t accept the argument that these same companies cannot reasonably identify when a user is a child. If their technology is sophisticated enough to understand us with extraordinary precision and personalise the content and advertising we see, it is sophisticated enough to know when children are using their platforms and they should carry much greater responsibility for designing those experiences accordingly.
The lesson from tobacco is not that social media is the same as cigarettes. It plainly isn’t.
Nor is it that every critic is acting in bad faith. The lesson is that when a product becomes deeply embedded in everyday life before society fully understands its consequences, regulation develops over time.
We should not expect an under-16 restriction or a new regulator to be the final answer. Technology will change, new platforms will emerge and regulation will need to adapt. That is not evidence that we should not legislate. It is how good regulation develops.
I also suspect the biggest impact may not be on today’s 15-year-olds, many of whom have already spent years growing up with social media. I think much more about the 8, 9 and 10-year-olds coming behind them.
Every parent knows how difficult it is to hold a boundary when your child says, “But everyone else has it.” Imagine changing that default.
Imagine a 10-year-old growing up knowing that Instagram, TikTok or Snapchat simply aren’t things children their age are expected to have yet.
That starts to change the social norm, and ultimately that is what this is about: what we want childhood to look like. We want resilient, independent young people who can think for themselves, build relationships, cope with setbacks and have the freedom to figure things out.
The legislation should absolutely be scrutinised. Act and New Zealand First have raised concerns, Labour supports progressing it while wanting improvements and those debates matter. But scrutiny should make the legislation better, not become an excuse for inaction.
Parents should parent, schools should educate and governments should regulate thoughtfully. Technology companies making enormous amounts of money from products used by children should also carry meaningful responsibility for making those environments safer.
More than a century of tobacco policy shows that regulation rarely arrives perfect. It evolves, strengthens and changes what society considers normal. Social media regulation will be no different.
Our children are growing up now. We will not get every detail right on day one, but the status quo is not good enough. A dedicated regulator is long overdue and New Zealand needs to keep moving forward.
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