Looking back on 2025, a year marked by global turmoil, timid reform at home, policy failure on ageing and a rushed social media ban that mistakes gesture for solution.

I look back on 2025 as through a glass darkly. At 88 years the more I learn the less I know. The standouts for the year are the turmoil inflicted on the global world order by the terrible Trump, the remarkable election success of the Labor government in May which fizzled, memories of the revolutionary reforms for Australia of our Wunderkind Whitlam, then the pathetic, inadequate reform package for aged care and the boneheaded policy banning social media for children under 16.

In 2025 I see my peers, colleagues and friends struggling to navigate ageing. There are many thousands of people, mainly women, but also men, who care for their partner and manage life in any way they can without help. They bear their burden outside the system.

It did not need to be this way.  We knew the surge in elders was coming. Australia’s first Intergenerational Report (IGR), released by Treasurer Peter Costello as part of the 2002-03 Budget, flagged the significant budget pressures from the aging baby boomer generation.

But governments spoke only of the burden on the economy and focused on where to put this burdensome group of slackers after retirement, when they were judged to be dependent until they died. Younger policy advisers with no experience of aging gave no thought to what these people might contribute and do with their longer lives; how we could build intergenerational communities where people of all ages interacted and lived alongside.

We have reached a stage where there is talk about the complex of issues involved with ageing policy and the government has tinkered with the system with a new Aged Care Act 2024, shifting to a rights-based system to get around abuses by care providers. But 3000 people lie in hospital beds today waiting for a place in care, 100,000 are listed to be assessed, and thousands more wait when they are assessed.

Kathy Eagar and Paul Sadler_,_ in _How to navigate the Support at Home maze_  detail just how difficult it is to access care and home help within our current system. The paperwork and then the waiting times for what remains inadequate care are formidable. And many people die before help arrives.

To remain at home today at 88 I am heavily reliant on technology. I can manage my life, banking, appointments, most services from my phone and computer. I email and message and talk to friends, carry around a Bose speaker and listen to Spotify, podcasts, news of the day and I watch a lot of streamed television drama.

It is evident technology is essential to manage, engage and enjoy life in old age. Enlightened policy would provide those over 65 with free Internet services along with ample training to master the complexity of demands now placed on all of us through the online world. And who best to teach us how to engage with social media than those now banned from its use? Youth media policy is no more far sighted than ageing policy.

Against this background I have viewed Trump’s antics with anger and despair. There are no words left to describe this individual. To talk about his behaviour is to be complicit in normalising him.

At home, following a stunning electoral victory at the election in May, go-slow Albo took charge. Although regularly admonished in the press, to justify his low flying government, he appears unmoved.

In November, remembering Gough Whitlam after 50 years and the price he paid for reform, the comparison is startling. Gough transformed Australia, promoting equality, encouraging an independent Australian identity, and modernising the country after 23 years of conservative rule. He made lasting changes in healthcare, education, cultural policy and in the position of women.

Go-slow Albo now talks like Trump. When asked in media interviews, what will success with the social media ban for under 16’s look like? He replied, “Success is the fact that it’s happening”.  The Government’s policy is “something’s happening”. This represents success on the global stage.

Policy planning for this triumph began when Anne West, the wife of the Premier of South Australia put down Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation, and said, “Peter you better bloody do something about this”. Peter Malinauskas, a man of courage and charisma squared his shoulders and became a champion for a social media ban for kids under 16. It did not take long for go-slow Albo to be onboard with what he saw as a popular cause that would grab a lot of attention; here was a feel good, emotional cause.

And heigh ho, within just 178 days legislation was produced and cleared for announcement. For policy made on a wing and a prayer the pace was hypersonic.

More than 140 social scientists and specialists in child development, mental health and technology had signed an open letter calling the ban too blunt. I was one of them and believe the approach is seriously flawed, aims at the wrong target, and could wreak havoc for many young people.

In his book, Jonathan Haidt supplements his call for a ban on social media with a program for children to go outside and play. That is a major point in his argument which has fallen by the wayside. He also concedes this issue is “a mission” for him and says, “he writes less as a social scientist than a fellow human being who has felt overwhelmed personally and perpetually since 2014.”

In an article in The Age on 11 December_,_ Haidt writes in a more balanced tone about what the ban may or may not do. Julie Inman Grant the Online eSafety Commissioner has also made clear that a heavy club was not what she asked for. She wanted a more nuanced approach and the ability to differentiate. That is not what she has now.

The causes of the rise in reported mental illness among the young are the result of a very complex mix of factors. Economic circumstances are a factor. This young generation was born into the Great Financial Crisis, to families that are smaller than they once were, with two parents working, or in single, or blended, or dysfunctional families; parents older than they once were and more anxious themselves, often afraid to allow their children the freedom they had as children.

COVID and the need to work, go to school and socialise online absent from friends, heightened this generation’s dependence on technology and their use of social media. Peer influence and their success in making their way in life and at school are crucial factors influencing mental illness in children. And mental illness is now described broadly, at times pathologizing normal emotions.

Patriotism, religion, belief in family and institutions are all in decline. The media news presents an overwhelmingly negative view of life and the future, because alarming stories and engendering fear and distrust pull ratings. Why would it be surprising children are more depressed? Their parents are.

We do not know what impact synthetic chemicals in food are having on children’s health. the Stockholm Resilience Centre which explores how people and nature can live and develop on a planet under pressure argues there is increasing evidence that ubiquitous exposure to thousands of manufactured toxic chemicals is a very important cause of disease in kids, damaging their development, their intelligence and their creativity.

A good social scientist does not take one factor from that cocktail mix and say this is the major cause so act on that and problem solved. Social media is an important factor in the mix, but the legislation implemented is a farcical attempt to deal with what is a major issue – the causes of depression in the young.

Over the past two weeks many writers and scholars have documented on Pearls and Irritations reasons this legislation is flawed. Among them: Stewart Sweeney,  Joel Scanlan and Greg Barns.

I could add the many ways by which this technology, when handled as the founder of the world wide web Tim Berners-Lee proposed, can and does help kids survive and thrive.

I can add from 30 years’ experience leading the regulation and the implementation of Children’s Television Program Standards and the production of children’s television programs, that I know that the big boys – and these are very big boys in charge of the tech platforms – will not concede this fight.

Already there are two cases before the High Court; there will be more. The kids are not onside with the ban: 6 per cent believe it will work. Two thirds of parents think it’s a nice idea, but a majority won’t enforce the ban with their own children. Those families who will comply are generally not the ones to be concerned about; the kids we should be most worried about are more likely to have parents who don’t care. We acknowledge kids will find, and are finding already, ways around the ban, and we can be sure the tech oligarchs will have ingenious ways to reach them. The argument in support of the ban goes on: this is a transition they claim; it is Generation Alpha who will get the benefit.

The claim is misguided. The genie is out of the bottle in the tech revolution, and it cannot be put back. These tech oligarchs are competing, investing billions, investigating ways to exploit AI that will make social media look like a Sunday School picnic. They are out to win at any cost. Chat bot companions for kids, anyone?

They must certainly be called to account. Our prime minister, if he truly has the conviction he espouses, could lead the charge to rally a worldwide collaboration between all the leaders of countries expressing the same concerns, but who are sitting on the sidelines observing this experiment.

Many countries, including Malaysia, Denmark, France, the UK, the EU (as a bloc), Norway, Italy, and Spain, are expressing serious concerns. They could all join forces to take on the giant companies which are creating havoc, not only for children but for all of us, with their amoral, avaricious invasion of all our lives. Insist social media is safe by design. Regulate toxic algorithms, ban addictive features and impose a duty of care. And insist AI be safe by design.

These companies should not be a law unto themselves. They do not live outside the system; they do not own the system. Yet.

Trump wants to outlaw the regulation of AI by any US state, so the states will have a fight on their hands. California’s Governor Gavin Newsom, where AI is blossoming in Silicon Valley, says he is ready for this fight. It appears we may have a three-to-five-year window for governments to do their job, to legislate in the interests of citizens and control these tech innovators before they take complete control.

Throughout my career I have found educational institutions highly antagonistic to media and its use in any form in education. Don’t watch television. Don’t use media in the classroom, don’t teach media studies at tertiary level. It does not belong. Ban everything but good role models for children. The schools and the advocates for children set themselves up in competition rather than as collaborators and they lost. Media education should begin in preschool and be a required subject at every level in schooling. Children must be introduced to and educated about the strengths and the pitfalls of media use early. This learning is as essential as reading and writing. Yet we have come to this. What about an eLearning Commissioner?

As for the social media ban, the Department for rearranging the deckchairs has a succinct word to say.

Happy holidays to all and parents, try to find time away from your phones to play with the kids.