95bFM ‘Safety by design approach’ needed instead of blanket social media ban for under-16-year-olds
22 May 2025
Interview by Castor Chacko, adapted by Sanat Singh
Founding member of the Adolescent Health Research Group, Dr Terryann Clark, says the proposed social media ban for under 16s is not an effective way of dealing with a range of challenges for youth wellbeing in Aotearoa.
Recently, Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon, announced a formal investigation into a ban on social media for those under the age of 16, focusing on reducing social media harm.
This announcement comes on the heels of debates sparked by a similar ban introduced by the Australian Government in 2024.
Newly launched pressure group B416, led by a group of parents and other community leaders, have launched a campaign to introduce ‘online safety legislation’. The group says that they want access to social media to be in line with age limits that are already in place for young people.
Dr Terryann Clark; a founding member of the Adolescent Health Research Group at the University of Auckland, told 95bFM’s The Wire that the rapid access to technology and information through the internet has meant that young people are living vastly different lives to their parents — and that this fact needs to be considered before looking to solve problems that young people face online.
“As parents, we're often not very well prepared to give advice and support our young people to be safe. I think it's a really different climate, and it's changing so rapidly all the time.”
B416 believes that the introduction of this ban is critical to address poor mental health outcomes for young people across the country.
Clark explains that, given current research, which is still relatively new, a cause and effect mechanism has not been found to establish that social media is leading to worse mental health outcomes for rangatahi.
She adds that although young people are still found in harmful situations online, a ban would be ineffective at dealing with those harms.
“They're going to find other places that are less unregulated. But also, bans tend to force young people underground. So, if they are having difficulty, they find they are going to be much less likely to talk to an adult because they know that they're not supposed to be there.”
Currently, a lot of social media platforms ban those under the age of 13 from using them. Clark says that platforms are not currently designed to stop people from lying about their age.
She adds that young people could also find workarounds to any bans, such as using a VPN to access social media sites from other countries.
“We already know that there's a ban on social media for under 13-year-olds, but recent surveys are finding that about 40% of young people under the age of 13; between the ages of 8 and 13, are already using social media. So our current strategies are really ineffective.”
Clark says that due to the rapid pace of change in social media platforms and the way young people interact with them, legislation is not going to keep up with changing usage patterns.
She also explains that young people are increasingly using social media to access essential information and support. Any potential ban would be cutting them off from those resources without fixing any of the issues young people are seeking help for.
An alternative approach, Clark suggests, that considers the design of these platforms, their marketing towards young people, and the algorithms that feed them harmful content would be more effective.
“I think we really need to look at the system architecture and look at the design of social media, how we give feedback to young people when they look like they're posting stuff that says that they might be in distress, [and] look at algorithms to make sure that they're not reinforcing young people's mood.”
According to Clark, we need a more holistic approach to regulating social media. Current legislation, which is 10 years old, has not caught up with the massive change in social media platforms.
“A safety by design approach is really needed. I also think that there needs to be some sort of graduated use of online spaces. We need to prepare children and young people for the online world.”
The most important thing to Clark is that we can produce legislation that is adaptive and can respond to the complex challenges surrounding social media platforms adequately.
She says important aspects of this solution would include further education, a safety by design approach and tools to help whānau navigate these platforms effectively.
“We need some really good legislation that's agile and that's able to cope with the rapidly changing nature of young people's online use. We need something that's going to protect our children, but also not restrict their opportunities and their connections and all the good things that come with online life, as well as some of the harmful things.”
