Beyond the Ban

 

Lucy Grant unpacks how youth community radio is putting the social back into media.

 

 

Punk in the UK, Winnie the Pooh in China, Jeans in the USSR. 

Bans generally have a lot more to do with enhancing the cultural appetite and youth demand for a prohibited good, than they do in stopping engagement. This is because bans don’t stop production, they just force supply and demand underground into unregulated spaces. 

It is through understanding the need that a good is meeting, and offering safe alternatives, that people can feel empowered to make different decisions.

 

Take drug use. 

At a music festival with an outright ban on drugs, a 19-year-old overdosed on ecstasy. 

Compared with a pill testing festival, which encouraged two-thirds of partiers to throw out their unexpected substances and put drug users in contact with service providers trained in how best to offer support.

 

Take alcohol. 

1 in 3 adults who drink alcohol do so at levels that put them at risk of alcohol-related disease and, 1 in 5 Saturday night emergency department presentations are due to alcohol. 

Government-backed DrinkWise, terrified to address alcoholism’s central role in Australian national identity, released the “It’s okay to say nay” campaign encouraging parents to never provide their teenagers with alcohol for a party. 

From experience, however, we all know the next place you turn after this parental ban isn’t sobriety. It is Sarah’s older brother who offers a discount on his resale of vodka cruisers. 

Instead, Heaps Normal “noticed non-alcoholic beer brands were either exclusively targeting a sober audience or were a box-ticking exercise for major alcohol companies.” So, two mates keen to cut down on their bad habit, brewed a non-preachy beer-tasting soft drink ready to be poured from the tap of your local pub. It became so popular that the company is now valued at $57 million.

 

Take social media.

There is value in seeing social media use as addictive - not to place the onus of addiction onto young people, but to understand addiction as the lifeblood of the app’s income. 

It is no secret that social media algorithms are designed to capture our attention for profit. Their constant AI-driven tailoring of feeds to meet individual preferences are designed to deepen the activation of the brain's reward centers and maximise screen time. 

Much like any large congregation of people in a particular space, many vital, life-saving and beautiful things, as well as many highly exploitative and threatening things have taken place as a result of young people’s use of social media.

Much of the time, social media merely reflects back the dynamics of prejudice, injustice and privilege that are currently created and sustained in the social world. 

In some ways this reflection is actually the point of social media. The social transmission of information, ideas and communication will not only always be important, but will always remain politically-charged, challenging, amusing and educational. 

However, given this profit-incentive to prolong engagement, where social media uniquely exacerbates vulnerability is in its production of isolation (creating informational echo-chambers) and loneliness (due to feeling more authentic and spending more time with online communities rather than in-person communities).

As such, the Australian Government has banned under 16 year old Australians from accessing a range of social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, X, Snapchat, and YouTube. This is a brave stand from the government against corporations who don’t have the youth’s best interests in mind. 

 

However, this ban will not stop young people from accessing addictive algorithms or being vulnerable to exploitation on the internet. 

What it will do is make the newest form of tricking the age-verification software a one-way-ticket to recess popularity. Even I know that a free virtual private network on the app store can make your device believe it is no longer in Australia. 

I also know from my early days on the internet that the unregulated forms of social media are the easiest to access and the freakiest of all - I doubt I am the only girl who received her first unsolicited picture at 15 years old in the depths of an Omegle chatroom. 

This ban is not getting rid of disturbed AI slop - it is just relocating it elsewhere, with a newfound shame and/or mystique attached. 

What this ban will do is deprive young people of access to a vital circulation of information, knowledge, connection, education, play, humour and digital literacy within a regulated online space.

 

What Australia needs to counter social media’s harms is an alternative, safe and truly social form of youth-specific social media for under 16 year olds to enjoy.  Luckily, there is one already set up.  

 

 

Student Youth Network (SYN) is Naarm’s youth media organisation that believes young people should be creators, not just consumers of media. With a community of over 300 volunteers aged 12 - 26, SYN is algorithm-resistant, youth-led social media to its core.

On 90.7 FM you’ll find a full-time stacked line up of young people hosting shows together. You can hear youth chat to each other live about music, sports, subcultures, gigs, art, politics, food, sexual education or just general stuff.

SYN boasts a social media of real connection, thoughtful content, youth independence and on-dial adult support. Beyond the station, we provide youth-specific media training, hands-on radio mentoring and content making workshops. This is because we believe in youth education and amplification, not banning. 

Unfortunately, the Government did not consult with our community youth media organisation regarding this ban. Nor did they provide any new funding opportunities to ensure this massive new need for youth-specific media could be assertively met. So I have come to spread the word myself!

 

Community youth media organisations are putting the social back into social media for under-16s. 

Follow SYN on social media to help us do the work this ban will fail to do.

Unless, of course, you are under-16. In that case, join us.

 

Lucy Grant