12 Comments
User's avatar
Amanda Jane's avatar

On the next episode of "Australia, the social media experiment"....

It will be really interesting to see how this unfolds. I'm sure many will be waiting and watching. Compliance will be tough and potentially a beaurocratic money-pit.

Your Apple /product maker idea is solid 👌

Expand full comment
Amanda Jane's avatar

But if the responsibility was laid on the product-makers than the government wouldn't have a bunch of new middle-managers pushing paper. 🙄

Expand full comment
Chris Cocuzzo's avatar

We'll find those paper-pushers somewhere!

Expand full comment
Sheridan Cass's avatar

This is super interesting, and not something I knew about. You make really great common sense remarks about the theoretical value and the practical problems in enforcement.

Expand full comment
Chris Cocuzzo's avatar

Thank you!

Yeah, tough problem. Unstoppable profitable companies married to obvious behavioral hooks. People will find a way, no doubt. But to assume that just one set of players (social media companies) will solve the problem is missing for the forest for the trees. Need multi-org and multi-player action

Expand full comment
Sheridan Cass's avatar

Yes, a systems solution! Very insightful.

Expand full comment
Claudia Faith's avatar

interesting, I didn't know about this. while there are some good aspects of it, I am not 100% on board with the idea of no social media before 16.. I guess there should be more of a balance somehow

Expand full comment
Chris Cocuzzo's avatar

This is a good impulse, Claudia!

The key question: what is social media?

Substack Notes? YouTube? iMessage? WhatsApp?

I think we all understand that TikTok, IG, and nearly-identical products are social media. But, yes, would you ban a 15 year old from YouTube? What about from WhatsApp? Much less obvious yes/no there.

This is why the exception list is so important. Who gets the pass, who doesn't.

Expand full comment
Mariella Hunt's avatar

As an American I think that some good could come from this but it does feel like it will be difficult to enforce.

I feel like it would be better to create places offline that kids would want to go to instead.

Expand full comment
Chris Cocuzzo's avatar

Thank you for the comment.

Completely agree that we want places offline. And I disagree with lots of stuff I see that there are none anywhere because nothing is walkable.

But since there is near unstoppable momentum behind social media companies and their problems, I hope we’ll stay focused on resolving those problems with technology where/when we can.

Expand full comment
Mariella Hunt's avatar

Where I live, the social places are indeed quite far and as a person who can’t drive that is a problem. But the city is growing so hopefully we will eventually have more buses etc.

Expand full comment
Chris Cocuzzo's avatar

Fair point. To say it another way - there isn’t a one size fits all description about whether there are places or not. Some areas - here close to NYC - very dense and lots of proximity. Omaha? Different story.

Expand full comment