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The co-author of a research cited by the nation’s communications minister in arguing for a teen social media ban says his analysis doesn’t justify the coverage, suggesting the federal government has “misunderstood” the paper.
On Monday, Communications Minister Michelle Rowland spoke in query time about why the Albanese authorities is continuing with a plan to ban Australians beneath the age of 16 from social media.
Rowland talked about a UK research she mentioned confirmed the “hazards of extreme use” for younger individuals utilizing social media.
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“In 2022 a gaggle of UK psychologists the neuroscientist [sic] analysed longitudinal information on 17,400 younger individuals. They discovered that younger ladies skilled a destructive hyperlink between social media use and life satisfaction when they’re 11 to 13 years previous; a destructive hyperlink between social media use and life satisfaction when they’re 11 to 13 years previous; and for younger boys it’s when they’re 14 to fifteen years previous,” she mentioned, in accordance with the transcript printed on-line.
It seems Rowland was talking a few 2022 paper printed in Nature Communications referred to as “Home windows of developmental sensitivity to social media“, although she didn’t point out it by identify.
One of many paper’s co-authors, College of Oxford professor of human behaviour and know-how Andrew Przybylski, mentioned he was unaware this work was being utilized in help of the coverage and that its findings don’t help a teen social media ban.
“I don’t agree that it gives the justification for this coverage. I believe they’ve misunderstood the aim and findings of our analysis,” he mentioned in an electronic mail to Crikey.”
Rowland instructed Crikey that the federal government has taken a “pragmatic strategy”.
“In arriving on the age of 16, the federal government has taken a realistic strategy, now we have consulted extensively with specialists, mother and father, youth organisations, teachers and our state and territory colleagues,” she mentioned in an electronic mail.
“Our strategy achieves a stability between minimising the harms skilled by younger individuals, whereas enabling connection and social inclusion.”
The paper discovered, as talked about by Rowland, that there are age- and sex-specific home windows of sensitivity to social media use at a inhabitants degree. However the authors continued that these “likely meaningfully differ throughout people”, that means that every particular person responds in a different way to social media based mostly on elements akin to their character, social circle and surroundings.
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Moderately than resulting in the concept we must always blanket ban kids from social media, the paper’s authors counsel these findings “may pave pathways for focused interventions that deal with the destructive penalties of social media whereas additionally selling its constructive makes use of”.
The authors’ nuanced conclusions comport with issues raised by the eSafety commissioner — the federal government’s web security regulator — and in a letter from 140 Australian and worldwide specialists who took subject with the bluntness of a ban. A parliamentary committee trying on the impression of social media explicitly didn’t suggest an age ban in a report printed this week due to “contrasting views” about whether or not it could make younger Australians safer.
Przybylski instructed Crikey that he can be blissful to work with the Australian authorities to assist them perceive their research and the way it pertains to the ban.
“It’s actually too dangerous they didn’t attain out to Dr Orben or myself earlier than together with our work this fashion,” he mentioned.
Have one thing to say about this text? Write to us at letters@crikey.com.au. Please embrace your full identify to be thought-about for publication in Crikey’s Your Say. We reserve the precise to edit for size and readability.
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