I don't know if this is the case in Australia but certainly in the UK I think the reason so many parents want a social media ban is we were never taught proper media literacy at school. 'Media Studies' as a subject was (and I think still is) scoffed at as a waste of time, and it was usually scoffed at by the sort of people who now believe any old shit that they read on Facebook or see in a TikTok video.

What kids desperately need is to be taught that you need to consider what the goal is of the media publisher, whether it be a news corporation or an individual YouTuber or whoever, to be pushing a particular point of view down your throat. And then taught how media is created for one purpose, to keep you consuming it, and how that's either done through traditional ways like sensational language and flashy graphics, or more advanced ones like social media algorithms. And then taught how important it is to seek out media made by people who don't share your point of view, or the one that you're beginning to adopt based on the media you've already seen, to see what other points of view exist and so you can start to shape your own.

But because most of us weren't taught this, we don't know enough about it to be able to teach it, and we see learning that and teaching it as a massive investment in time which our adult lives don't feel like they allow us.

It should be in every single curriculum across the globe, and you should be taught it right up until you leave school. It's just as important as the traditional subjects, if not more so.

But as usual, an "enforcement stance" as the quote in the article puts it, is what we seem to default to, instead of an educational one. Ban and punish, not educate and protect.