September 11, 2024 • 6 mins
"We Will Still Have Issues" Tech Expert Weighs In On Youth Social Media Ban
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mix one or two point three magsinally in the morning. Now,
this is the rule change that everybody is talking about,
and this is the social media ban for kids that
both our premiere and the Prime Minister is now promising
before the election. How in the hell are they going
to enforce it? Trevor Long, our tech expert, you legend
tell us.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I don't think they know, and I certainly don't. I mean,
the fact is that fourteen, fifteen, sixteen year olds don't
have ID many don't have passports. And I don't know
about you, But when I go to my twelve year
old son's baseball games, I look at the kids in
his team, and I go, this kid looks twelve, but
he's sixteen. This kid looks sixteen, but he's twelve. If
I can't work out how old they are, how going
to compute up. So it's untried. It's untested, And look,
(00:47):
I have no problem with the government putting money behind
trying to look into this, but the very idea that
you can enforce a ban of any sort also begins
to take away parental responsibility. Look, I'm a parent of
three kids twelve, fourteen and eighteen turning eighteen and I've
got to tell you, I don't think that the government
(01:07):
is the one that should be restricting this. I think
parents are the ones that need to tell their kids
when and what they can do, and that's what we're
losing sight of.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
And that's just it, right, Trevor. I mean, I think
it's great. I don't think we need to have an
argument that perhaps social media is something that has been
put upon our kids and we haven't really worked out
the full ramifications of it, and we're only just getting
it now. So I'm not arguing that there needs to
be more control, but making a government legislaate just seems
bizarre to me, because what are you going to do?
(01:36):
Send the cops around and knock on a fifteen year
old a store like it just doesn't I just don't
see it working.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
And it's so emotive this issue for very good reason.
There are absolutely tragic circumstances where children have been bullied
in social media circumstances. But let me be clear. You
take Instagram, TikTok and Facebook and everything else in snapchat
out of a child's life, and those kids will still
have phones. They will still have SMS and WhatsApp and
(02:04):
discord and many other platforms for which they can communicate
with their mates, and therefore they can be bullied, excluded,
and we will still have issues with kids who suffer
at the hands of other kids through you know, technology,
mobile phones, but social media isn't involved. So we've got
to have a wider conversation about helping parents. Parents need help.
(02:27):
I'm a lucky parent that I'm a digitally savvy parent.
Many aren't. And let me tell you, I've had problems
with social media and my kids. I've had to change
schools for one of my children because of social media.
So trust me, I get it. But I think parents
need support as much as kids need.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
A bad So, Trevor, I've been to the meetings that
school puts on, like you know, and I'm trying because
I am you know. I still use a freaking street
director to get around, all right. So I'm coming from
a lot of way back here and I've been to
those meetings. But can you, for everybody like me, what
did you do and how did you handle it given
that you're so tech savvy that you had a problem
(03:05):
going on with your babies.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
I want to be clear, I don't have the silver bullet,
but you know, the advice I give to people is
conversations and rules. Conversations are critical. You can't just give
a kit a phone and hope that they're going to
work it out. You've got to talk about it. You've
got to talk regularly about it. What was the good
things you saw on the internet today? What was something
bad you saw? How did it make you feel? Talk
about it around the dinner table. But most importantly, when
my twelve year old turns thirteen this month and he's
(03:29):
been waiting for two years to get social media, he
will be given the two page digital contract. And now
that contract says you've got to behave well, you can't
use your phone in the bedroom, you've got to treat
people well. It talks about how to act online. And
he signed it with his signature, and then we don't
punish him through you know, you know, the end of
the world. But we come back to that contract every
(03:51):
time something happens and we say, is this was that
the right thing to do? Did you say the right thing?
Should you have handled that better? So we've got a
kind of mechanism that conversation. But if you're not talking
to your kids about it, if you're not being real
with your kids about the dangers of the internet, and
you know, stranger danger. When I was a kid with
a thing, it's still a thing. Bullying was a thing
when I was a kid. It's still a thing. It's
(04:11):
just happening differently. So please just talk. That's the most
important thing. Talk, establish rules, and get everyone to agree
so that we're all on the same page, in the
same household.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
May I think mirroring would be the best way to
go here. I know you're saying the government really can't
police their parents have to do their job. I know
that there's parental locks and controls and things like that
you can access remotely, but I would just love to have,
for example, my daughter's Instagram account on my phone. I've
got the password. It's also open on my phone. I
see the dms, I see the messages, I see all
the activity. That would be the only way to be
(04:44):
fully across it.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Right. Look, I can tell you right now that TikTok
and Instagram have parental tools. So my daughter's account on
Instagram and TikTok are managed by me, So essentially I'm
literally TikTok knows me as the parent. So if my
daughter wants more screen time, she has to come to me.
I can look at things that happen on her account.
(05:05):
I can't read everything, I don't see everything, but I
can see on Instagram. I get an alert, a profile
kind of update when she's added X number of friends
and who they are, so I can have that conversation.
Because I've got this alert, I can say, oh, who's
this person? I met them at school to day whatever.
You know, there are those those tools exist, We've just
got to use them. And this is what I point.
You've got to educate parents on this. We need education
(05:28):
that shows that these platforms actually do try and help.
I know they're not the favorite companies in the world,
and I'm not big fans of them broadly, but they
are trying. They're trying, and there are some tools parents
need to embrace them.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Do Trevor, just really quickly. If you went to your
well eighteen year old and went to them when they
were sixteen and said, hey, by the way, it's illegal
now we're going to take it off you, what would
they have said?
Speaker 2 (05:52):
It would have been a pretty bad day for me
and the family. It would have taken a good month
to recover from I'm allried by poor thirteen year old
if he gets deprived in the next couple of years.
So yeah, that's the challenge we've all.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Got, Trevolong, thank you so very very much, my pleasure.
It's Trevor Loong, Teke expert. You can see him on
Today in a Current Affair and he's a tech commentator
at e f TM dot com
Mix one or two point three magsinally in the morning. Now,
this is the rule change that everybody is talking about,
and this is the social media ban for kids that
both our premiere and the Prime Minister is now promising
before the election. How in the hell are they going
to enforce it? Trevor Long, our tech expert, you legend
tell us.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I don't think they know, and I certainly don't. I mean,
the fact is that fourteen, fifteen, sixteen year olds don't
have ID many don't have passports. And I don't know
about you, But when I go to my twelve year
old son's baseball games, I look at the kids in
his team, and I go, this kid looks twelve, but
he's sixteen. This kid looks sixteen, but he's twelve. If
I can't work out how old they are, how going
to compute up. So it's untried. It's untested, And look,
(00:47):
I have no problem with the government putting money behind
trying to look into this, but the very idea that
you can enforce a ban of any sort also begins
to take away parental responsibility. Look, I'm a parent of
three kids twelve, fourteen and eighteen turning eighteen and I've
got to tell you, I don't think that the government
(01:07):
is the one that should be restricting this. I think
parents are the ones that need to tell their kids
when and what they can do, and that's what we're
losing sight of.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
And that's just it, right, Trevor. I mean, I think
it's great. I don't think we need to have an
argument that perhaps social media is something that has been
put upon our kids and we haven't really worked out
the full ramifications of it, and we're only just getting
it now. So I'm not arguing that there needs to
be more control, but making a government legislaate just seems
bizarre to me, because what are you going to do?
(01:36):
Send the cops around and knock on a fifteen year
old a store like it just doesn't I just don't
see it working.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
And it's so emotive this issue for very good reason.
There are absolutely tragic circumstances where children have been bullied
in social media circumstances. But let me be clear. You
take Instagram, TikTok and Facebook and everything else in snapchat
out of a child's life, and those kids will still
have phones. They will still have SMS and WhatsApp and
(02:04):
discord and many other platforms for which they can communicate
with their mates, and therefore they can be bullied, excluded,
and we will still have issues with kids who suffer
at the hands of other kids through you know, technology,
mobile phones, but social media isn't involved. So we've got
to have a wider conversation about helping parents. Parents need help.
(02:27):
I'm a lucky parent that I'm a digitally savvy parent.
Many aren't. And let me tell you, I've had problems
with social media and my kids. I've had to change
schools for one of my children because of social media.
So trust me, I get it. But I think parents
need support as much as kids need.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
A bad So, Trevor, I've been to the meetings that
school puts on, like you know, and I'm trying because
I am you know. I still use a freaking street
director to get around, all right. So I'm coming from
a lot of way back here and I've been to
those meetings. But can you, for everybody like me, what
did you do and how did you handle it given
that you're so tech savvy that you had a problem
(03:05):
going on with your babies.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
I want to be clear, I don't have the silver bullet,
but you know, the advice I give to people is
conversations and rules. Conversations are critical. You can't just give
a kit a phone and hope that they're going to
work it out. You've got to talk about it. You've
got to talk regularly about it. What was the good
things you saw on the internet today? What was something
bad you saw? How did it make you feel? Talk
about it around the dinner table. But most importantly, when
my twelve year old turns thirteen this month and he's
(03:29):
been waiting for two years to get social media, he
will be given the two page digital contract. And now
that contract says you've got to behave well, you can't
use your phone in the bedroom, you've got to treat
people well. It talks about how to act online. And
he signed it with his signature, and then we don't
punish him through you know, you know, the end of
the world. But we come back to that contract every
(03:51):
time something happens and we say, is this was that
the right thing to do? Did you say the right thing?
Should you have handled that better? So we've got a
kind of mechanism that conversation. But if you're not talking
to your kids about it, if you're not being real
with your kids about the dangers of the internet, and
you know, stranger danger. When I was a kid with
a thing, it's still a thing. Bullying was a thing
when I was a kid. It's still a thing. It's
(04:11):
just happening differently. So please just talk. That's the most
important thing. Talk, establish rules, and get everyone to agree
so that we're all on the same page, in the
same household.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
May I think mirroring would be the best way to
go here. I know you're saying the government really can't
police their parents have to do their job. I know
that there's parental locks and controls and things like that
you can access remotely, but I would just love to have,
for example, my daughter's Instagram account on my phone. I've
got the password. It's also open on my phone. I
see the dms, I see the messages, I see all
the activity. That would be the only way to be
(04:44):
fully across it.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Right. Look, I can tell you right now that TikTok
and Instagram have parental tools. So my daughter's account on
Instagram and TikTok are managed by me, So essentially I'm
literally TikTok knows me as the parent. So if my
daughter wants more screen time, she has to come to me.
I can look at things that happen on her account.
(05:05):
I can't read everything, I don't see everything, but I
can see on Instagram. I get an alert, a profile
kind of update when she's added X number of friends
and who they are, so I can have that conversation.
Because I've got this alert, I can say, oh, who's
this person? I met them at school to day whatever.
You know, there are those those tools exist, We've just
got to use them. And this is what I point.
You've got to educate parents on this. We need education
(05:28):
that shows that these platforms actually do try and help.
I know they're not the favorite companies in the world,
and I'm not big fans of them broadly, but they
are trying. They're trying, and there are some tools parents
need to embrace them.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Do Trevor, just really quickly. If you went to your
well eighteen year old and went to them when they
were sixteen and said, hey, by the way, it's illegal
now we're going to take it off you, what would
they have said?
Speaker 2 (05:52):
It would have been a pretty bad day for me
and the family. It would have taken a good month
to recover from I'm allried by poor thirteen year old
if he gets deprived in the next couple of years.
So yeah, that's the challenge we've all.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Got, Trevolong, thank you so very very much, my pleasure.
It's Trevor Loong, Teke expert. You can see him on
Today in a Current Affair and he's a tech commentator
at e f TM dot com
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