As you will have heard in the news, Australia has passed landmark rules to ban under-16s from social media. In a world first, social media firms will have to take all reasonable steps to prevent young teens from gaining access to sites like Facebook, Instagram, X - formally Twitter - and the like. The firms who own these sites will face fines of up to $50 million AUD if they fail to comply. The tech giants themselves have described the laws as vague, problematic and rushed, and that's probably quite true.

The current legislation offers almost no details on how the rules will be enforced. Seems they're leaving it up to the tech giants to ensure compliance. It will be at least 12 months before the details are worked out by regulators, and the ban comes into effect. Naysayers say it's going to be impossible to police; young people will always find a way around the rules if they want to find them. And that is quite true. Just as I'm sure there are young New Zealanders who have managed to get around the cell phone bans in schools that the government introduced earlier this year.

But it's drawing a line in the sand. It's saying being on social media sites is harmful for young people, that the bad outweighs the good and that we as a society and a community are going to recognise that. We're not going to accept that just because everybody's on it, that it's going to be really difficult to police, that kids will always find a way around it. We're not going to accept that. We're not going to accept that the genie is out of the bottle and that there is nothing that can be done except endless hand wringing about the harm that's being caused.

People said it would be impossible to stop kids using cell phones at schools and that the children themselves, the young people, would never put up with it. Well, guess what? It's working for the vast majority of students. Even the principal’s who said look, this is just not going to work, the kids have them, they’ve had them for a while now, it's part of their lives, we're not going to be able to police it. We don't want to spend our time policing this rather than teaching - even they have been forced to admit that concentration has improved. That young people are more interactive with one another. They're not heads down on their devices, they're not using their devices to cause harm or to receive harm. Again, it's that drawing a line in the sand just as a line has been drawn in the sand over school attendance.

There are all sorts of reasons why our school attendance is so appallingly low. And it's going to be incredibly difficult to achieve this government's target of 80% of kids attending school, 90% of the time. But baby steps, baby steps. An expectation was made that you will send your children to school, that will become the norm. And so in term 3 of this year, 51.3% of students attended school regularly. Which is bloody low, but it is still an increase of 5.3 percentage points from term 3 of 2023 - baby steps. I feel like if the wind's blowing in the right direction, then. You know, encourage the kids to go to school, the expectation is there. That your children, our children, will attend school regularly. People have responded to that expectation. They rise to meet it. There is an expectation that children will be free from cell phone distraction at school. It wasn't there before. You know that expectation was not there. It was just oh well, we kind of have to put up with it, they're part of everyday life. This government came in and said no, there is an expectation that children will be free from the tyranny of their devices and schools and young people have responded to that.

Even more topically, there's an expectation that gang insignia won't be flaunted in public. And as the police minister Mark Mitchell reported this morning, even the gangs are responding to that. The expectations have been made clear to them at hui and in the meetings around the country. And in the main, they have responded to that.

So set expectations, don't settle for being steamrollered by the lowest common denominator. Or for being manipulated by billionaires, tech companies, or for the facile argument that everyone's doing it, nothing can be done. You know, have a go, set expectations if something is wrong, say so. The harm that is being done to young people by being on many of these social media sites outweighs the good. Acknowledge that, set expectations that they will be safe from that while they are at their most vulnerable.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In a year, under 16's in Australia will no longer be allowed to access social media.

The Australian Senate has passed laws banning them from accessing the platforms.

The ban will come into force at the end of next year -- social media companies will face fines if they fail to take reasonable steps to keep children off.

Senior researcher at Koi Tu Centre for Informed Futures Dr Felicia Low, told Kerre Woodham parents need to be able to have a say in what their children are doing.

She says it can be easier if there's a top-down approach where a law is in place, so children can't argue against it.

LISTEN ABOVE.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The first phase of the Royal Commission of inquiry into the COVID-19 response will be handed to the Government today. There’s one of finding I know is going to really resonate with a section of this listening audience and members of the wider community. The head of the inquiry, Professor Tony Blakely, says vaccine mandates caused huge pain to a “substantial minority” during the pandemic, and the government should consider whether their benefits, that is the vaccine mandates, outweighed their harms. The report found while the mandates during the later stages of the pandemic were supported by most New Zealanders, the damage to social cohesion needed to be considered when planning for future outbreaks as he told Mike Hosking on the Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning.

“I think a lot of us around the world are learning that those mandates might have gone a bit too far, for a bit too long and it's a very delicate balance. In a future pandemic, which is what we're really focused on now, you can't rule out the need for doing mandatory measures again because the virus might be two/four times as fatal, and two or four times as infectious, and you just need to do everything. However, if we had something like Covid again, I think all of us are saying that if we prepare better, have better contact tracing, then we'll need less of the mandatory measures like lockdowns and vaccine mandates.”

Absolutely. I heard Mike too say this morning that inquiries and reports aren't really worth the paper they're written on. That enormous amounts of energy are expended on them, and then they're delivered behind closed doors, and that's that. He said the response to a crisis will depend on whomever you have in government – if they're halfway capable, you get a halfway capable response. If they're not, you don't. But I disagree. I think you can learn from what you've done right and what you've done wrong, and I think the way the government handled the mandates, among other things, was poor.

I mean, first of all, not getting the vaccines when they did so we're behind the eight-ball. And I would have put anything, anywhere, up any orifice, to get the hell out of lockdown. The frustration and fury felt by many, mainly North Islanders, over following increasingly more ludicrous rules as we struggled to get to some arbitrary vaccination target is still ongoing. As is the fury felt by the significant minority of New Zealanders who lost their jobs and their livelihoods, because they refused to get vaccinated – and this is despite Jacinda Ardern saying in September of 2020 there would be no forced vaccinations and there weren't, and those who chose to opt out, more importantly, would not face sanctions. So that's what she said, and then it all changed again.

So people chose not to get vaccinated for many, many reasons. Do not lump them all into one basket. I mean, there were some basket cases in amongst them, the people who had the tin foil on top of their heads, but there were also people who were extremely genuine in their motivations and their reasons for not getting vaccinated. Think Novak Djokovic, sort of as the poster boy for that - very, very careful about what they put into their bodies and why they choose to put into their bodies what they do. I mean, these were not the lovies who jumped on the bandwagon who were pumped full of Botox and filler and the like. There are many, many reasons why people chose not to get vaccinated, and initially they were assured by the Prime Minister they wouldn't have to and there would be no sanctions if they chose not to.

So I think Professor Blakely is right, that you can learn from the past and you can learn how to manage it, because the fallout is ongoing. Every time we get something about the rising colorectal cancer - well, yes, that'll be the vax. So, you've got people who don't believe in science. You've got vaccine fatigue. Now we've got a rise in whooping cough because people are just sick to death of the of the word vaccination. They don't trust vaccinations. They don't trust governments telling you to get vaccinated because of what has happened, and this is the Western world over, not just in New Zealand. So the fallout from not managing the vaccination program is going to be felt for years to come. They did say in this first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry that some aspects were handled well. The first six weeks – great. After that, the wheels fell off. I think he said the wheels were wobbly, I'd go further and say the wheels fell completely and utterly off. I think we can learn, and I think we should learn, and I think there are lessons that can be learned, and the first phase of the inquiry has proven that.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.