No house, education or internet for you!

Advertisement

Why does Australia hate children so much?

Children will be blocked from social media under sweeping national plans to shield young people from online harm by mandating strict age barriers in federal law and punishing tech giants that break the rules.

Australia will move before the next election to a national regime to force tech platforms to enforce age verification. A final age is not yet settled but could be within the 13- to 16-year-old range.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will announce the plan on Tuesday after canvassing the proposal with state premiers on Friday, based on a South Australian proposal to ban social media for all children under the age of 14.

Obviously, the “ban” will be utterly unenforceable, just as vapes have been. Cigarettes before that. Booze all along.

What it will do is add an extra layer of frisson to social media, encouraging every child to get around the ban, and lift social media participation.

Don’t get me wrong, Facebook et al are evil. There is virtually no protection from bullies, loons and carpetbaggers who can aggregate like never before. As much for adults as kids.

Advertisement

But wastrel pollies putting in symbolic bans isn’t going to achieve anything other than disguise their moral turpitude.

How about the moral scum of Canberra fixes their own behaviour and policies instead:

  • provide affordable housing to rent and buy;
  • stop the flood of foreign subalterns taking entry-level jobs and crushing wages;
  • let alone reversing the decline of education systems.
Advertisement

Nope. Just ban the internet. That’ll fix the little shits.

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.