Six months on, Australian teenagers react to the social media ban

(10 Jun 2026) ASSOCIATED PRESS Sydney, New South Wales, Australia – 4 June 2026 1. Various of young people on their phones 2. UPSOT (English) group of young people: "It’s not working.” ASSOCIATED PRESS Sydney, New South Wales, Australia – 29 May 2026 3. SOUNDBITE (English) Timothy Koskie, The University of Sydney, School of Media and Communication: "This is the beginning of something. What we talk about in sociology is something called ‘network effects’. Basically, the more people that are on it, the more people are on it, the more people that aren’t on it, the more people aren’t on it. So, we can hopefully start to see the opposite starting to happen, where increasing numbers of kids, increasing groups of kids are not in that space.” 4. Various of Koskie scrolling on his phone ASSOCIATED PRESS Perth, Western Australia, Australia – 4 June 2026 5. SOUNDBITE (English) Kathryn Modecki, The University of Western Australia, School of Psychological Science: "It's a swamp. I think we can all agree it's a swamp, right? And, so, these are companies who have served up a swamp. It doesn't have to be this way and so how can we keep young people safe is what would be great to see these for-profit companies cleaning it up.” ASSOCIATED PRESS Sydney, New South Wales, Australia – 4 June 2026 6. Various of young people on their phone ASSOCIATED PRESS Perth, Western Australia, Australia – 4 June 2026 7. SOUNDBITE (English) Kathryn Modecki, The University of Western Australia, School of Psychological Science: "One thing I talk a lot about is communication because it's extremely difficult to know what a young person is engaging in online. We want them to feel safe speaking to a trusted adult in some capacity. If they are encountering problematic material, you know, that's another concern associated with the ban, right? That that might be less likely. But keeping those lines of communication open is, is really critical.” ASSOCIATED PRESS Sydney, New South Wales, Australia – 4 June 2026 8. Various of young people on their phone 9. SOUNDBITE (English) Kait Gotham, mother to Ilias Patrikios: "I’m still of the opinion that parents have to parent and that the government can’t do that for you.” 10. Various of young people on their phone 11. SOUNDBITE (English) Tatijana Dagarin, 16-year-old social media user: "I think parents have a really big responsibility to make sure they know what their kids are seeing online and make sure, like, their kids are not on social media too young. Or they could set up parental restrictions or something and apps have a big responsibility that some of them, especially Instagram, aren’t doing (enough) to monitor what is shown on the platforms. Like, there’s so many videos of people just, like, dying and no one does anything about it. I think something that did have a big impact on what kids are seeing and how much time they were spending on social media was definitely the ban in schools. So, I think more things like that are actually more tangible are much more helpful.” 12. Various of young people on their phone 13. SOUNDBITE (English) Ilias Patrikios, 16-year-old social media user: "Stop bad stuff from going on social media and then they (children) won’t experience it. Like, why is it there in the first place?” 14. Various of screens 15. SOUNDBITE (English) Ela Menon, 16-year-old social media user: "I don’t know, they should crack down on the companies not the actual young people. They should make the companies do better and get fines if they don’t.” 16. Various of young people on their phone ASSOCIATED PRESS Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...