Social Media Ban for Under-16s is just the beginning

I read a story the other day that stopped me in my tracks: young girls are using ChatGPT as a source of weight-loss motivation.

Apparently this is another thing parents have to be petrified of in this digital age.

According to the article young girls were prompting Chat GPT to send through motivational statements, such as “you’re not dying, you’re improving”.

How truly horrifying.

And it should raise alarms for every single parent living in Australia today.

How did we ever get here?

It certainly didn’t start with Chat Gpt, but it’s been heading that way for some time.

Children being bullied and filmed on Tik Tok and Snapchat; girls as young as 13 editing, filtering and sharing overtly sexualised photos of themselves on Instagram; adults infiltrating kids' electronic virtual worlds; primary school children viewing explicit images online.

The online world is leaving a trail of destruction on children as young as 8.

And in this AI world, we now have robots telling impressionable young girls that ‘nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’.

Honestly, I have never felt so powerless as a parent. 

As a mum of two young girls, I've struggled over the years with navigating the daunting path of social media and electronics use with them.

How do I find the balance between giving my kids some independence to connect with their mates ... and my need to protect them from every potential bad thing that could possibly be said and done to them online?

Maybe it's always been there, but in a different form.

Back when I was a teenager a lot of my world was consumed in the pages of Dolly and Cleo magazines.

Messages in these magazines weren't necessarily sanitised (who DOESN'T remember Dolly Doctor?!), and there certainly wasn’t much diversity when it came to the types of female body shapes being portrayed in their pages.

But today it’s a markedly scarier world than it was back in 1990 reading glossy magazine articles titled "Is it love this time or just another crush?".

And it’s also harder to know just what the right thing to do is when our kids start heading down a dangerous online journey.

So what’s the answer?

Well, I wholeheartedly believe the Federal Government’s ban on social media for kids under 16 is a great start.

This ban officially begins on December 10 and it certainly hasn’t come without controversy.

Critics say kids will find workarounds by lying about their age, using VPNs, or shifting to messaging apps not covered by the law.

But this is a flawed argument.

It’s like saying we shouldn’t require fences around swimming pools because determined kids could still climb over them.

The ban is a good start.

But there is so much more to do.

As parents. As educators. As a society. 

Especially as our kids’ use of AI becomes more prolific.

The parents of Dolly Everett - the 14 year old student who took her life 8 years ago after relentless online bullying - have consistently called for more to be done at schools to educate kids about safe and respectful online behaviour.

They are spot on. It is imperative our schools keep up and adapt their approach to education in response.

I’ve often said I would love to see a bigger focus in the classroom on mental health and wellbeing of children - adding online safety covering all platforms is a no brainer. 

I know I’d happily have my child forgo trigonometry for this.

For more advice on talking to children about social media visit: Social media advice – for families | headspace