Thanks Daddy Albo, but we’ve got this parenting thing covered

By Wednesday morning, when the social media ban for under 16s officially began, our household had already reached the penultimate stage of grief. As I caught the bus to work, my phone pinged: “I’ll go a week without social media if you don’t ban me,” the text read. Aha. Bargaining. The last step before acceptance.

Only, it wasn’t because of the ban. After flashing up a notice that it would use account age information to confirm if the user was old enough, TikTok continued to work as ever. Turns out every child in Australia who wasn’t dropped on its head at birth has already changed its birth year to indicate it’s at least 25.

Apparently the sophisticated algorithm famous for profiling users so accurately it can predict your emotional state is completely nonchalant to the twenty-somethings inhaling “junior high” meme videos and Clash Royale cheat codes. So far, the ban has left these infantile adult accounts unscathed.

We were bargaining because I foreshadowed that if the ban didn’t work, we’d enforce it manually. Which exposes the fundamental truth of the much-feted first-of-its-kind, internationally announced social media ban experiment that the government has spent untold monies showing off about. (The $100,000 in flights for Communications Minister Anika Wells to deliver a six-minute brag at the UN in New York is nothing compared with the unlisted millions we can assume spent on the Office of the eSafety Commissioner.) Simply, the so-called social media ban depends on parents parenting. Just as restricting social media use did before the ban came in.

The prime minister acknowledged as much when he defined success as “making it easier for you to have a conversation with your child about the risks and harms of engaging online”. Parents don’t have to worry that “by stopping your child using social media, you’re somehow making them to odd one out”. Best of all, parents can appeal to a higher authority. “Instead of trying to set a ‘family rule’, you can point to a national ban,” the prime minister said.

OK, Albo. Many parents will appreciate that the prime minister has set himself up as an uber-pater familias, the Supreme Court of parenting to whom they can outsource the role. But that very fact does raise the question of why the actual parents – pater and mater – feel so disempowered.

Don’t get me wrong – parenting can be hard. I did not sanction the creation of a TikTok account; nonetheless, one appeared. I don’t like the stupid game fads, with their in-game chats, overpriced bolt-ons and pokie-machine noises. I loathe the mindless scrolling. But our family tolerates some of it with negotiated parameters. TikTok, but no posting anything identifiable, including face, place or name. Snapchat is a hard no, despite protestations that it was the only possible way some friends could be contacted (turns out regular text messages work just fine, after all). And all the devices get locked away in a charger box an hour before bedtime.

These decisions remain about as popular as a tummy bug in a jacuzzi. But that’s the job of a parent – to do hard things, consistently. To have discussions about what is acceptable and what is not. To project certainty despite doubting yourself. To hold the line through a storm of tears. To see the future on behalf of an immature brain. To remember that love is not giving children what they want right now, but the foundations to thrive in future.

From that perspective, the ban on under 16s accessing social media is fine by me, even if the mechanism never works and it all turns out to have been a trick to get parents parenting.

But it raises the question as to why parents are having such a tough time doing something humans have done since time immemorial without the help of a paternalistic prime minister? What is going on that a generation can’t talk to its young without the government carving out the chance to chat? And more starkly – because inevitably what we will see is a reinforcement of privilege – how has society come apart so far that the ban will make a minimal difference to some kids’ lives, while for others it will be their first experience of online limits?

This, and not the efficacy of a technological solution (applied with all the hallmarks of deliberate incompetence on the part of reluctant platforms), is what the ban has put in the spotlight. How is it that parents weren’t already empowered?

Of course, there are the pressures of modern life, including the cost of living, which forces both parents into long work hours. Exhausted families and parents who simply can’t be physically there find it hard to monitor internet usage. Even having the argument over applying parental device controls can feel too much. The sense of never being enough, failing in multiple areas of life simultaneously, undermines parental confidence.

And then there’s the divorce rate. Screen time is one of the strongest arguments against divorce in my mental ledger. It’s hard enough negotiating limits that happily married parents can agree to and enforce on an outraged child. Competition between unaligned parents who struggle to communicate over the basics is a recipe for lax or avoidable rules.

Not to mention our social obsession with happiness and self-actualisation, divorced from effort and meaningful sacrifice. There is a short route to the chimera of wellbeing and to many children – and mental health organisations – it seems to lead right through online chat groups. What parent trained to elevate self-esteem over earned esteem would dare question a child demanding access to that pathway?

The uncomfortable truth that this social media ban reveals is how brittle families have become. Every new “child-protection” law, every eSafety commissioner, every government-funded app blocker and awareness campaign, is a quiet admission that parents no longer feel they have the authority, the time, the unity or the cultural backing to say “no” and make it stick.

Worse, every government crutch that purports to support parents risks further weakening the ability to assert rules without the intervention of laws. Eventually, the paternalistic state takes precedence over family law. If you’re listening, Daddy Albo, I’d like a Chairman’s Lounge membership and some parliamentary perks for Christmas.

Parnell Palme McGuinness is an independent insights and advocacy strategist.