Western countries are searching for reasons why the anxiety, neuroticism and introversion of young people are increasing. Social media is being targeted as the major cause. So, Australia has decided to ban social media usage for children under age 16.

Such an approach will fail. Kids will certainly get around it; technically age verification technology is not infallible and there are more important fights to be had with the corporate tech titans involved than this one, and we need them to co-operate. Seventy percent of adults surveyed by The Age are sceptical. The ban will cause conflict in the family and, most importantly, it will undermine the potential of all children to master and adapt to a rapidly changing social and economic future. Education is the only answer.

Jonathan Haidt’s book T_he Anxious Generation_ has triggered this moral panic from governments and their advisers. But the opinions of experts in media literacy and mass media research and the body of media research on effects do not support Haidt’s conclusion; social media is one factor among a complex web of factors, not the major source of the rise in depression and anxiety of young people.

Haidt is fixated on 2010 when smartphones were introduced as the marker for the increase in mental sickness among children. This generation were raised during the aftermath of the GFC (2008) when many of their parents, in all Western countries, suffered serious economic disadvantage with consequences continuing today. As well COVID seriously disrupted their lives. It crippled their social development and ability to interact, form friendships and learn to socialise.  For many of them their social and educational interaction with others was online during the COVID years; they were sequestered, and the social media world was a refuge. COVID brought an unprecedented disruption to early development.

Other important factors have affected the development of this generation. More of these children are growing up in single-parent or single-child families, often with parents older than those in earlier years. They are anxious parents, concerned for their children’s safety. Children no longer have the freedom to go outside unsupervised; they are not free to roam and play as their parents were. In the US, young children are taught how to hide when a shooter enters a school with the intention to kill. This is a new phenomenon. Online is possibly the only place where they are free. Haidt is right on this point. The deprivation of freedom to play is a major reason children feel lonely, alienated and depressed.

These children we aim to protect up to 16 will be able to vote in the UK at that age; they will be driving cars and, in a short time, eligible to go to war for their country. AI is already in use in classrooms and the transformation that technology will bring is being discussed with fearful apprehension.

Children must learn to use AI as a tool to enhance their learning in the areas they are interested in. There are concerns that AI usage will mean we replace cognitive effort, lose the ability to think critically, to interpret, to summarise, even to write. Governments need to ensure the development of fair, honest and trustworthy AI systems with the full participation of young people in their use and design.

The tech titans should be in the firing line with Western governments globally as they are responsible for their content, for the misinformation, the fake news, the facilitation of bullying and abuse, and they must be held to account for their business model which manipulates users and promotes addiction. This is a fight democratic governments must win and devise appropriate regulation before they lose complete control of our democracy and institutions.

President Trump is giving Silicon Valley free rein to win the AI race; there will be no regulation by his White House. It is a matter now left for US state governments and other countries with the backing of parents, teachers and for all those involved in the care of children.

There is only one answer to the problem we are facing. That is, media literacy, a subject which has never been taken seriously, so children have grown up with little capacity to critically analyse the media which dominate their lives.

From day one in pre-school where children are taught to look both ways before crossing the street, not to talk to strangers, to be civil to their playmates, they must learn to manage their digital devices and when to turn them off. By age six, 74% of children can manage the remote, scroll and click. They then play with them freely.

A 16-year-old has this year come up with a simple game called Grow a Garden, which was spotted and acquired by Roblox; it has made video game history with more online users playing together, 21.9 million simultaneous users growing their gardens. They are mostly young children as young as 10. It brings them joy. Tetris is credited with helping trauma victims, with labs around the world using video-game therapy for different types of mental health problems.

Gaming is just one of the opportunities we educators have missed through ignorance, prejudice and refusal to teach a generation of children using current technology.

As far back as 2006, the Federation of American Scientists issued a public statement supporting the use of computer and video games in classrooms:

“…educational games are fundamentally different than prevailing instruction because they’re based on challenge, reward, learning through doing and guided discovery in contrast to the ‘tell and test’ methods of traditional instruction… Games offer attributes important for learning – clear goals, lessons that can be practised repeatedly until mastered, monitoring learner progress and adjusting instruction to learner level of mastery, closing the gap between what is learned and its use, motivation that encourages time on task, personalisation of learning, and infinite patience.”

In the same year, Ofcom, the British communication regulatory authority, called for media literacy in three main areas, covering children’s ability to access, understand and create media.

But after three decades of research on media literacy, we have learnt that teachers who are unfamiliar with social media platforms are unwilling to engage with their students’ use of technology, and likely to moralise about media, instead of facilitating critical inquiry. Students who regularly use social media outside school, reject simple formal lesson plans and dated curriculum materials taught by teachers who know less than they do.

North Carolina has recently passed an Act, “Protecting children in a digital age”. The law restricts the use of digital devices during class. It also mandates the implementation of a social media literacy curriculum in elementary, middle school and high school.

The law, while well intended, falls well short. The curriculum is very limited and there is no funding for professional development support for the teachers.

To achieve media literacy, teacher training programs, and the K-12 curriculum should aim to teach children to be ethical creators, informed consumers and digital citizens as well as teaching them how to avoid the dangers of manipulation and addiction through algorithmic awareness.

Students should learn to create and critique their own podcasts, social media campaigns, analysing digital content, fake news and controversial media postings. Students and teachers need to appreciate the value of social media as a tool for democratic self-governance and critically examine how it is used to gain power, influence and advance social change.

Such a proposal would not yield results by the next election. What we are seeing from government is short-term thinking, to grab headlines, with zero chance of long-term benefit. A social media ban would disrupt children’s learning and access to media, rather than teach them mastery and understanding. The ban should be rethought.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.