By Byron Kaye and Cordelia Hsu
SYDNEY, Dec 8 (Reuters) – Sydney teenager Ayris Tolson believes the start of her first summer holiday under Australia’s youth social media ban will be relatively easy as she spends time with family, but as the weeks pass, she fears she will be alone and isolated.
From December 10, Australia will impose the world’s first social media ban on children under 16, blocking them from TikTok, Alphabet’s YouTube and Meta’s Instagram.
More than a million under-16s will lose their accounts and nine days later they will go on a long holiday from December to January when most of Australia closes until February.
“You’re basically isolated for about six weeks during the school holidays,” Tolson, 15, told Reuters. “As it goes on, I’m probably going to feel more attached to social media. It’s not such a good time.”
Mental health experts say the launch just before the longest school holiday of the year could exacerbate the shock for teenagers who rely on technology for socialization and will not have the basic routines, or institutional support, of school.
The cold turkey effect of no school and no social will be especially evident for children in remote places or minority groups such as migrants and LGBTQI+ people, who rely more on the internet to connect with like-minded people, experts say.
No quantitative study shows how many Australians under 16 use social media to access mental health services, but a 2024 survey by youth service ReachOut.com found that 72% of 16-25 year olds use it to seek mental health advice and almost half use it to find professional help.
“If you were at school, there would be a lot of conversation and chatter around it; it’s a shared experience,” said Nicola Palfrey, head of clinical leadership at headspace, a government-funded youth mental health service.
“If you have more time on your hands and you’re in your head quite a bit, if you’re feeling quite anxious or worried or sad, that’s the kind of thing where time alone with your thoughts is not ideal. Those are the people who are starting to feel concerned.”
The Australian government presented the ban – which threatens the platforms with a fine of up to A$ 49.5 million ($ 33 million) – as beneficial for mental health as it will protect young people from bullying, harmful content and addictive algorithms.
In a conference this month, the Commissioner for e-Security Julie Inman Grant said that some young people in marginalized groups “feel more themselves online than they do in the real world”, and should visit various exempt online spaces including those run by headspace.
The government will collect two years of data after the ban on “the benefits, but also the unintended consequences”, she said.
YOUTH SERVICES READY FOR INCREASE IN CASES
Already time – a by-product of when the law passed through parliament – is leading to changes in youth services that rely on social media to reach young people.
Kids Helpline, a telephone and online service, typically experiences a lull during the summer. This year, it is training 16 additional consultants, a 10% increase, for a possible deluge of referrals due to the social media ban, said its head of virtual services Tony FitzGerald.
School-related stress typically decreases during the holidays, but “with young people being disconnected from being able to communicate, potentially, with each other on these platforms, this can actually increase anxiety”, he said.
“We will be ensuring that we have adequate consultancy resources available to support that increase.”
Lauren Frost, head of policy for the Victorian Youth Affairs Council, said she was receiving so many inquiries from youth organizations about how to function without social media, she was planning a new national body to discuss how to reach young people offline. But during the holidays, even offline options will be in short supply.
“The interaction that young people have with teachers or support staff or youth workers will be less, so they won’t be able to fulfill that role of supporting young people during this time of transition,” Frost said.
“They are feeling a lot of fear and a lot of anxiety.”
At Perth’s Fiona Stanley Hospital, a gambling and social media addiction clinic will monitor for an increase in presentations over the holidays, said head of mental health and addiction services Daniela Vecchio.
Annie Wang, 14, said she uses several social media apps but wasn’t too worried about the ban because she did most of her communication on Discord, which is exempt as its main purpose is messaging.
For those without Discord, she said: “They’re basically being shut down by everyone, and they’re probably going to be all school holidays, which isn’t good”.
($1 = 1.5053 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Byron Kaye and Cordelia Hsu, with additional reporting by Stefica Bikesh; Editing by Michael Perry)