On November 7, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced that his federal Labor government would quickly implement a previously proposed ban on social media access for all children under the age of 16. The next day he convened a meeting of the “National Cabinet”, an unelected body created during the pandemic, at which various state and territory leaders, most of them Labor, endorsed the policy.

Although the legislation has yet to be introduced in parliament, Albanese indicated the government would try to pass a law imposing the ban in the coming weeks, and the opposition Liberal-National Coalition said it would vote in favor. Once again, the major parties join hands to rush through legislation without any popular mandate, in this case to dramatically expand their internet censorship.

The significance of the policy is underscored by the fact that it is the first ban of its kind targeting an entire cohort in a supposedly democratic country.

Albanese and his ministers have not provided any coherent reason for the ban or its alleged urgency. Their most consistent line was that social media is damaging to young people’s mental health. They pointed to backward and offensive content on the Internet, which is not a new phenomenon, as well as security risks.

And at times, they combined these talking points with references to the need for children to play outside and interact in person, in comments that often veered into a nostalgia for 1950s white-picketed suburbia, usually the province of hard-line conservatives. right

The policy and its various half-baked justifications have caused widespread anger, from the children themselves, parents and the wider community. When Albanese, ironically, took to social media to promote the ban, his posts were inundated with almost universally negative and derisive responses.

Among the obvious points that have been highlighted is that the government has not provided any evidence from experts in any field, psychological or technological, for the benefits of what is a far-reaching state intrusion into everyday life. Nor did they explain how such a policy would be implemented or enforced.

The mental health and well-being argument is fairly easily disproved. How will it artificially deprive young people of their main means of social communication, apart from increased loneliness, especially for the most vulnerable?

But in general, the purported concern for mental health is rejected by every strand of Labour’s agenda.