Australia has banned social media for all users below the age of sixteen, a first-of-its-kind measure in the world.
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In a controversial new bill, Australia has banned social media for all users below the age of sixteen, a first-of-its-kind measure in the world. The country has put the onus on tech companies to restrict and regulate platform access. While concerns have been raised over its implementation, and details and the enforcement of the law are unclear, it is a watershed moment in the world’s struggle to limit the negative consequences of social media.
One need only look at the recent elections around the world to see how social media is disrupting the fundamental process of democratic societies. The recent US election was dubbed the “Podcast Election” by Scott Galloway, Prof. of Marketing at NYU Stern, highlighting the role podcasts and new media played in reaching the masses and the fall of traditional media outlets like television and newspapers.
This observation rings true in India as well. Political parties now routinely use popular podcasters and influencers to push their agenda into the public domain. In the 2024 central election, parties didn’t just run political campaigns on the ground but also WhatsApp and Instagram. One can almost say that the battleground is now in the digital world as much as in the real world.
The Indian government has embraced this change with open arms–the first National Creator Awards ceremony was held in 2024 to recognise the impact of digital creators. So, not only is new media replacing traditional outlets, but it is also gaining legitimacy and being seen as an authoritative source of information, notwithstanding its insidious nature.
According to the World Economic Forum’s 2024 Global Risk Report, India was ranked the highest for online misinformation and disinformation risk. At this point, it is common knowledge that pockets of social media channels, whether on Instagram, Facebook or X, exclusively deal with peddling propaganda to sway people towards certain ideologies and beliefs. With deepfakes and AI-generated content thrown into the mix, the ability to trust the evidence of one’s senses is under siege.
Romania held its Presidential Election in November 2024, and its citizens were in for a shock when they discovered that Călin Georgescu, a far-right candidate that very few had heard of and who had been polling at 5 percent previously, suddenly shot to the top of the polls and became the frontrunner for President. What was more concerning was that he had campaigned as an independent leader, had not joined any TV debates and had held no rallies. His sole platform for outreach was TikTok. Over two years, he generated a following of 400,000 followers on the platform to use it to sway voter opinion and spread propaganda. His controversial statements praising historical Nazi figures and open admiration for Putin are now a cause for concern for a country that hosts a NATO military base and shares a border with Ukraine. After allegations that his campaign used fake accounts to manipulate social media activity came to light, the country’s constitutional court ordered a recount and has subsequently deferred the decision to annul the results of the first round. As the situation develops, citizens and political experts are stunned at the results of this campaign and what it could mean for the country’s future.
However, what’s now abundantly clear is that democratic societies are woefully under-prepared to tackle the issues created by the proliferation and widespread adoption of social media. While certain countries have begun taking measures to restrict access to these platforms, the new social order that these platforms have created is inundated with news, soundbites and images, all teetering at the edge of virality, and is rewiring models of thinking and communication, thus reshaping society in its image. The problem of trust in media, lack of sanguine debates, and the hyper risk of fake news have perplexed those who worry about the future of democracies.
The predictions of such a tribalist mentality of today’s social media world were presciently made over sixty years ago by the media theorist Marshall McLuhan, who is widely known as the ‘prophet’ of media. McLuhan said, “All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values.” In 1964, he published the book Understanding Media, which had the seminal idea that “the medium is the message.” This idea meant that it was not the content of any medium that mattered but the medium itself. Using the example of ‘electric light’, he said that its invention created avenues that didn’t exist earlier, such as brain surgery or nighttime sporting events. But these avenues can then be interpreted as the “content” of the electric light, seeing as they wouldn’t exist without it, meaning that the “medium” itself matters most, not the content that it engenders.
From old to young, the world is falling prey to new mediums via the incredible technology of mobile phones, surpassing any other tool of human life in its ubiquity. Renowned social psychologist Jonathan Haidt said smartphones and social media have “rewired childhood and changed human development on an almost unimaginable scale.” His theory is McLuhan’s message repackaged for the 21st-century audience that smartphones are changing human consciousness as we know it. Haidt said the answer is simply to regulate Internet and social media access and pass legislation to enforce the change. That is exactly what Australia seems to have done, and perhaps more need to follow and implement.
About the authors: Prof. Vineeta Dwivedi is a former media professional who teaches Communication and Negotiations at SP Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR).
Abhishek Choudhary is a product manager at Unilever and an alum of SPJIMR.
Australia has banned social media for all users below the age of sixteen, a first-of-its-kind measure in the world.
