November 18, 2025 • 10 mins
Lisa & Russell opened the phone and textlines to ask your thoughts on the upcoming under 16s social media ban? There were lots of valid points and thoughts from listeners both for and against the ban. Tune in to hear more.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, Lisa, there's only about three weeks to go, I
think twenty two days until the social media ban of December, Yes,
when it will be against the law for social media
companies to allow people under the age of sixteen to
sign up for a new social media account or continue
(00:20):
their social media use, which some have already been doing
for years. This is going to be very, very tricky
and interesting.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I think this is a fantastic idea.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
If I had kids that age, I wouldn't want them
on social media.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Until at least sixteen, if not thirty six. But I
think it's.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Divided in the population a little bit. It doesn't have
people marching in the streets, but I know it has
definitely fired up some conversations around dinner tables at home.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
It's going to.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Be and you know, for a ten year old, eleven
year old, it's great. They don't really probably don't know yet.
It's going to be hard for the ones that are
fourteen and fifteen, who have already already been on for
a while and that's how they have their do their thing.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
They communicate with their mates that way.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Yeah, it's I mean, it's almost like when we were
kids saying okay, you can't use the phone now, you.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Can't, can't ring, can't ring, party line, remember the party line.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
You've been using the phone for a couple of years.
Now you can't use it, and you know, for another
sixteen months or saying. So, it's going to be really
hard for those ones. I don't know if there was
another way they maybe could have done it, but young one.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Those in that had already had an account for the
young ones. I think it's a new one.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Fantastic.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
So this will take in TikTok, snapchat, you know, which
is a big one amongst the kids. Yeah. Facebook maybe
not so much anymore. Instagram, no, No. If mom and
dad are on Facebook, kids on Facebook. In fact, just
having mom and dad on Facebook has cleared kids out
of Facebook anyway. So it's all good. A bit old,
(01:55):
but it's but it has It's instigated a lot of
conversation and a lot of parents are having to tackle this.
I know, I am. I mean, one of my kids
is over sixteen, so that's not a problem, but the
other one is only thirteen.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
So we're literally going to talk about it with the
Prime Minister in dad Chat with Adrian Barratt.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
He's coming in before eighty four eight.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
But in the meantime, what are your thoughts on the
social media ban? And you know, do you have a
fifteen year old?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
How are they dealing with this?
Speaker 1 (02:24):
How are they how are you going to keep an
eye on them trying to get around it too?
Speaker 2 (02:27):
I know they're smart little buggers with.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Well, which is handy when they need to help you
with your laptop.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yes, but half of them.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Have probably already found their way around it exactly well,
Laurel and Mindari said, my niece has gotten around it already,
around the social media band by itting her name to
her daughter's instag account.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
So it's going to be interesting to talk to the
Prime Minister when he gets here a little bit later
this hour, just how they're sort of preparing for that
kind of thing. Because kids are smart kids, they are smart,
smarter than us.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Just go to Como, John Morning, where do.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
You sit on this surgeon?
Speaker 4 (02:57):
There you go?
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Good?
Speaker 5 (03:00):
Yeah, that thing about you just said about people getting
around it, yeah, that's going to be very easy to do.
But anyway, you've got me on my soapbox. Now. I
really strongly oppose this. I really think we are taking
something away from our children that is part of everyday life.
They need to learn that because they need to learn
(03:22):
and be educated about the good parts, because there's a
lot of good parts about social media and the and
the bad parts. Rather than completely banning them from it,
they need to be educated and sold well, this is
how And it's like it's a bit like alcohol, right, Okay,
we banned them from drinking alcohol, but we still educate
them about the pitfalls of it. And you know, even
(03:45):
when they get to the right age, they need to
be educated leading up to that about what's right and
wrong about it.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
I agree with you, but I think I see is
a reasonable age to start that.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Yeah, I just think that needs to be a little
bit more accountability from the platforms themselves. They seem to
have this ability to be able to stop people from
saying certain things, and you know, how.
Speaker 5 (04:13):
To stop exactly how to stop people from doing certain
having certain content on there.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
That's right. Well, they've obviously proven that they have the
technical skill to be able to do that. Now they're
not going to get at one hundred percent of the time.
We agree with that, but I think a little bit
more pressure needs to be put on those platforms themselves
because they're going to lose a whole audience.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Yeah, I don't think twelve year olds are equipped to
deal with half of the pressure that they find on
social media.
Speaker 5 (04:40):
No, yeah, but that's that. Then it comes down to
monitoring by parents as well.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Yeah, that must be impossibly if there isn't enough to do,
really hard I feel so sorry for parents for you know.
Speaker 5 (04:56):
Yeah, it was hard enough when my kids were growing up,
because that's when it was starting to come starting to
get really big. Yeah, so it was still quite new
and still you know, there was things that you'll find
out all the time. So it was hard then to
try and keep a little on it.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Today it's worse now, John, I can tell you.
Speaker 5 (05:16):
Oh yeah, I can imagine it is.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Yeah, all right, John, thank you very much for your
for your thoughts there.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Mate.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
He's very strongly opposed.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
To it, Yes, very strong point.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
But I guess I just think maybe sixteen is a
reasonable age to.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Start what he's talking about.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
As you've raised, what about the fourteen and the fifteen
year olds who have already been doing It's going to
be hard.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
To close things once the horse has bolted, It's yeah,
I mean, what do you do?
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Do you not deal with it at all then, or
do you have to where do you start exactly?
Speaker 3 (05:49):
I guess we're thinking about the ones that are like
eleven and twelve now that anyway.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
We would like to get your I just put it
all on me.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Kenwick is old to bits with it is that if
it saves one kid from you know, being bullied and
ending in a very bad way, that's great.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
And there are other.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Countries looking on with much interest to see how it
works out. Melanie and Woodridge said it's a brilliant idea,
but parents of even twelve year olds are going to
find it hard. The twelve year old are going to
find it hard being told they can't do it anymore.
But you know, as she was a mother of girls,
teenage girls when I was at school, you could you
(06:27):
might have had got bullied at school or something, but
you could leave and you could go home and you
could close the door. Now it follows your home if
you're on your phone all the time and there's no Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
And Melanie brings up that point about being one of
a kid being bullied on Facebook by others at high school.
That's the thing. Yeah, you could go home and escape
it for a while. There was a respite with social media,
there's none. Donna and y Ancient. What are your thoughts
on the social media band?
Speaker 6 (06:54):
Yeah, I don't think it's going to work because the
kids are a lot smarter than the policy when it
comes to computer tea, Yes, yeah, they're really tech savvy.
It is wouldn't it be better if they had more
parental control? So yeah, roly under sixteens, I know, you know,
(07:16):
the fourteen to sixteen year olds are going to have
complete meltdowns. But from the under sixteens, the parental control
means that the parent is privy to all platforms that
they go on, a private messages.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Well, I think there is a level of that in there.
But once again, it's how do they get around you
know that they find a way of getting around it.
Maybe they use an older brother or sister to help them,
you know, circumvent mom and dad. It's just yeah, and
I guess maybe not all parents agree, and we'll say, well,
we won't do it anyway, or we'll just do it
to get you on, you know, And so that's why
(07:56):
the government say, well, it's just everybody. I don't know.
I'm just thinking of the sorts of things that they
would have been thinking around the table when they were
coming up with this.
Speaker 6 (08:06):
I mean, personally, I'm against it. All these people have
been listening to what's happening in the UK and apparently
the UK has just taken it way over the top,
and everyone thought they were going to do this here.
Everyone went yeah, everyone went into a panic here because
(08:28):
of what was happening in the UK and their privacy
is gone.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Well, all right, Donna, thank you very much for your
thoughts there. It's dividing the populations and with good reason, understandably,
so I think so good luck with you would keep
thanks again.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Getting a lot of comments on the text, getting quite
a few comments about people saying if they don't have
social media, how are they going to vent their feelings
and so on.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
But there's also a train of thought that perhaps they'll learn.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
To communicate face to face again a little bit more
rather than relying just on being on a keyboard or
phone or whatever. So many ways, I guess it's so yeah,
there's so many ways of looking at all of this.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
There is there is Josh is in ellen Brook, what
is what is your stance on the matter, Josh?
Speaker 4 (09:18):
You know, he goes, yeah, I'm glad you just said that, Lisa,
because you guys are our age, and you remember back
when we were younger, you didn't know whether someone called
you unless you went back. And after they discovered, after
we had Star sixty nine, you can actually tell someone
to wrong you. You had no idea. And so the
(09:39):
fact of the fact is what people were saying behind
your back and all that stuff and you didn't know,
and that's their reality. Now it's turned everybody's reality into
your reality. And you live with this stuff, and it's like,
it's like a drug. Okay, if you were to put
a drug in front of someone and go here it is,
(10:00):
have it, and you can either say yes or no.
And if you have it, it's bad. And social media
seems to be like a drug. You don't need it,
like people are using it and then when it's taken
away from them, they're complaining because they're going to withdrawals.
And it's I mean, it's one of my pet hates
social media. I don't use any social media at all
(10:22):
because I do not need it.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah, that's like a drug.
Speaker 6 (10:28):
Very good.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Yeah, I think it's it's a good point.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
Yeah, I'll leave you there.
Well, Lisa, there's only about three weeks to go, I
think twenty two days until the social media ban of December, Yes,
when it will be against the law for social media
companies to allow people under the age of sixteen to
sign up for a new social media account or continue
(00:20):
their social media use, which some have already been doing
for years. This is going to be very, very tricky
and interesting.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I think this is a fantastic idea.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
If I had kids that age, I wouldn't want them
on social media.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Until at least sixteen, if not thirty six. But I
think it's.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Divided in the population a little bit. It doesn't have
people marching in the streets, but I know it has
definitely fired up some conversations around dinner tables at home.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
It's going to.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Be and you know, for a ten year old, eleven
year old, it's great. They don't really probably don't know yet.
It's going to be hard for the ones that are
fourteen and fifteen, who have already already been on for
a while and that's how they have their do their thing.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
They communicate with their mates that way.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Yeah, it's I mean, it's almost like when we were
kids saying okay, you can't use the phone now, you.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Can't, can't ring, can't ring, party line, remember the party line.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
You've been using the phone for a couple of years.
Now you can't use it, and you know, for another
sixteen months or saying. So, it's going to be really
hard for those ones. I don't know if there was
another way they maybe could have done it, but young one.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Those in that had already had an account for the
young ones. I think it's a new one.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Fantastic.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
So this will take in TikTok, snapchat, you know, which
is a big one amongst the kids. Yeah. Facebook maybe
not so much anymore. Instagram, no, No. If mom and
dad are on Facebook, kids on Facebook. In fact, just
having mom and dad on Facebook has cleared kids out
of Facebook anyway. So it's all good. A bit old,
(01:55):
but it's but it has It's instigated a lot of
conversation and a lot of parents are having to tackle this.
I know, I am. I mean, one of my kids
is over sixteen, so that's not a problem, but the
other one is only thirteen.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
So we're literally going to talk about it with the
Prime Minister in dad Chat with Adrian Barratt.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
He's coming in before eighty four eight.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
But in the meantime, what are your thoughts on the
social media ban? And you know, do you have a
fifteen year old?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
How are they dealing with this?
Speaker 1 (02:24):
How are they how are you going to keep an
eye on them trying to get around it too?
Speaker 2 (02:27):
I know they're smart little buggers with.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Well, which is handy when they need to help you
with your laptop.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yes, but half of them.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Have probably already found their way around it exactly well,
Laurel and Mindari said, my niece has gotten around it already,
around the social media band by itting her name to
her daughter's instag account.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
So it's going to be interesting to talk to the
Prime Minister when he gets here a little bit later
this hour, just how they're sort of preparing for that
kind of thing. Because kids are smart kids, they are smart,
smarter than us.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Just go to Como, John Morning, where do.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
You sit on this surgeon?
Speaker 4 (02:57):
There you go?
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Good?
Speaker 5 (03:00):
Yeah, that thing about you just said about people getting
around it, yeah, that's going to be very easy to do.
But anyway, you've got me on my soapbox. Now. I
really strongly oppose this. I really think we are taking
something away from our children that is part of everyday life.
They need to learn that because they need to learn
(03:22):
and be educated about the good parts, because there's a
lot of good parts about social media and the and
the bad parts. Rather than completely banning them from it,
they need to be educated and sold well, this is
how And it's like it's a bit like alcohol, right, Okay,
we banned them from drinking alcohol, but we still educate
them about the pitfalls of it. And you know, even
(03:45):
when they get to the right age, they need to
be educated leading up to that about what's right and
wrong about it.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
I agree with you, but I think I see is
a reasonable age to start that.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Yeah, I just think that needs to be a little
bit more accountability from the platforms themselves. They seem to
have this ability to be able to stop people from
saying certain things, and you know, how.
Speaker 5 (04:13):
To stop exactly how to stop people from doing certain
having certain content on there.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
That's right. Well, they've obviously proven that they have the
technical skill to be able to do that. Now they're
not going to get at one hundred percent of the time.
We agree with that, but I think a little bit
more pressure needs to be put on those platforms themselves
because they're going to lose a whole audience.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Yeah, I don't think twelve year olds are equipped to
deal with half of the pressure that they find on
social media.
Speaker 5 (04:40):
No, yeah, but that's that. Then it comes down to
monitoring by parents as well.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Yeah, that must be impossibly if there isn't enough to do,
really hard I feel so sorry for parents for you know.
Speaker 5 (04:56):
Yeah, it was hard enough when my kids were growing up,
because that's when it was starting to come starting to
get really big. Yeah, so it was still quite new
and still you know, there was things that you'll find
out all the time. So it was hard then to
try and keep a little on it.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Today it's worse now, John, I can tell you.
Speaker 5 (05:16):
Oh yeah, I can imagine it is.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Yeah, all right, John, thank you very much for your
for your thoughts there.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Mate.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
He's very strongly opposed.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
To it, Yes, very strong point.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
But I guess I just think maybe sixteen is a
reasonable age to.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Start what he's talking about.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
As you've raised, what about the fourteen and the fifteen
year olds who have already been doing It's going to
be hard.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
To close things once the horse has bolted, It's yeah,
I mean, what do you do?
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Do you not deal with it at all then, or
do you have to where do you start exactly?
Speaker 3 (05:49):
I guess we're thinking about the ones that are like
eleven and twelve now that anyway.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
We would like to get your I just put it
all on me.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Kenwick is old to bits with it is that if
it saves one kid from you know, being bullied and
ending in a very bad way, that's great.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
And there are other.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Countries looking on with much interest to see how it
works out. Melanie and Woodridge said it's a brilliant idea,
but parents of even twelve year olds are going to
find it hard. The twelve year old are going to
find it hard being told they can't do it anymore.
But you know, as she was a mother of girls,
teenage girls when I was at school, you could you
(06:27):
might have had got bullied at school or something, but
you could leave and you could go home and you
could close the door. Now it follows your home if
you're on your phone all the time and there's no Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
And Melanie brings up that point about being one of
a kid being bullied on Facebook by others at high school.
That's the thing. Yeah, you could go home and escape
it for a while. There was a respite with social media,
there's none. Donna and y Ancient. What are your thoughts
on the social media band?
Speaker 6 (06:54):
Yeah, I don't think it's going to work because the
kids are a lot smarter than the policy when it
comes to computer tea, Yes, yeah, they're really tech savvy.
It is wouldn't it be better if they had more
parental control? So yeah, roly under sixteens, I know, you know,
(07:16):
the fourteen to sixteen year olds are going to have
complete meltdowns. But from the under sixteens, the parental control
means that the parent is privy to all platforms that
they go on, a private messages.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Well, I think there is a level of that in there.
But once again, it's how do they get around you
know that they find a way of getting around it.
Maybe they use an older brother or sister to help them,
you know, circumvent mom and dad. It's just yeah, and
I guess maybe not all parents agree, and we'll say, well,
we won't do it anyway, or we'll just do it
to get you on, you know, And so that's why
(07:56):
the government say, well, it's just everybody. I don't know.
I'm just thinking of the sorts of things that they
would have been thinking around the table when they were
coming up with this.
Speaker 6 (08:06):
I mean, personally, I'm against it. All these people have
been listening to what's happening in the UK and apparently
the UK has just taken it way over the top,
and everyone thought they were going to do this here.
Everyone went yeah, everyone went into a panic here because
(08:28):
of what was happening in the UK and their privacy
is gone.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Well, all right, Donna, thank you very much for your
thoughts there. It's dividing the populations and with good reason, understandably,
so I think so good luck with you would keep
thanks again.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Getting a lot of comments on the text, getting quite
a few comments about people saying if they don't have
social media, how are they going to vent their feelings
and so on.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
But there's also a train of thought that perhaps they'll learn.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
To communicate face to face again a little bit more
rather than relying just on being on a keyboard or
phone or whatever. So many ways, I guess it's so yeah,
there's so many ways of looking at all of this.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
There is there is Josh is in ellen Brook, what
is what is your stance on the matter, Josh?
Speaker 4 (09:18):
You know, he goes, yeah, I'm glad you just said that, Lisa,
because you guys are our age, and you remember back
when we were younger, you didn't know whether someone called
you unless you went back. And after they discovered, after
we had Star sixty nine, you can actually tell someone
to wrong you. You had no idea. And so the
(09:39):
fact of the fact is what people were saying behind
your back and all that stuff and you didn't know,
and that's their reality. Now it's turned everybody's reality into
your reality. And you live with this stuff, and it's like,
it's like a drug. Okay, if you were to put
a drug in front of someone and go here it is,
(10:00):
have it, and you can either say yes or no.
And if you have it, it's bad. And social media
seems to be like a drug. You don't need it,
like people are using it and then when it's taken
away from them, they're complaining because they're going to withdrawals.
And it's I mean, it's one of my pet hates
social media. I don't use any social media at all
(10:22):
because I do not need it.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah, that's like a drug.
Speaker 6 (10:28):
Very good.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Yeah, I think it's it's a good point.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
Yeah, I'll leave you there.
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