‘What’s the worst thing that’s gonna happen?’ South Australia Premier says social media ban is about protecting children

By Hira Humayun, CNN

(CNN) — South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas told CNN’s Jake Tapper his country’s world-first social media ban for children under 16 is about protecting them from addictive algorithms, asking: “What’s the worst thing that’s gonna happen here by delaying kids’ access to social media?”

In the exclusive special, Tapper spoke with Malinauskas, a proponent of the ban, and Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist and author of “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.”

Australia has banned under 16s from using 10 platforms – Instagram, Facebook, Threads, Snapchat, YouTube, TikTok, Kick, Reddit, Twitch and X. The platforms have said they’ll comply with the ban, using age verification technology to identify under-16s and suspend their accounts, but they don’t believe it’ll make children safer.

Malinauskas commissioned the South Australia state draft law that inspired the nationwide ban.

He acknowledged that there is value in having social media, but added, “it is doing kids harm.”

“We know, definitively, it is having severe consequence for thousands of young children around the world,” the premier said.

When asked about teens migrating to non-banned platforms and still being able to access potentially harmful parts of the internet, the Australian premier pointed out the concerns with social media apps in particular.

“The difference between everything that’s available on the internet and a social media service, is that addictive nature. It is the algorithms,” he told Tapper. Malinauskas explained that social media applications authorize children to share personal data with a company “to utilize and monetize,” and that additional platforms could be added to the ban.

Additional social media apps that meet the criteria can be added to the ban, the premier said.

“Our legislation has a great degree of flexibility so for platforms or businesses that meet the criteria, it allows our eSafety commissioner and the minister to add them to the list, and they too will be banned,” Malinauskas said.

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has also previously said that the list of banned sites is evolving, and new sites could be added as they gain popularity or offer new services.

Haidt described social media as “the largest corporate destruction of human potential in human history,” and said the ban in Australia will help children.

“They will now be more motivated to actually spend time with other kids, which is the best thing you can do for mental health,” Haidt said.

The Premier acknowledged the ban would not be perfect and said reports of teens circumventing it using VPNs are “all very predictable.” But he stressed that thousands of Australian kids now have more time now that they’ve lost access to their social media accounts.

“But more than that, parents are now having conversations with their kids in a way that they didn’t feel they were empowered prior to the ban,” Malinauskas said.

The South Australia leader recounted a recent interaction he had with a flight attendant whose daughter lost access to her Snapchat account.

“While she was still looking at her phone, she was looking at it a lot less,” Malinauskas said, adding that the mother told him she noticed an improvement in her ability to be able to talk to her daughter.

Watch the full interview with South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas and Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation, on CNN.com/Watch.

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CNN’s Hilary Whiteman contributed to this report.