(Image: Gorkie/Private Media)

Let the inner-city lefties chatter away over their craft-brewed beer. There’s one issue which preoccupies those in the ‘burbs. It’s social media and its impact on families. Just ask any parent outside the school gate. And Scott Morrison knows it.

The question is: might Morrison make it the basis of an old-fashioned family values campaign come election time? It does after all play directly to Morrison’s persona as the family man with conservative values.

The prime minister pointed to the evil — literally — of social media in his address to a Pentecostal church conference on the Gold Coast earlier this year. He warned that social media could be used by “the evil one”.

“It is going to take our young people … it’s going to take their hope, it’s going to steal their hope,” he said while telling church leaders they were what the country needed now.

He was also to take the running on the issue at the recent G20 meeting in Rome (before it all went off the rails) by arguing for further international action on social media privacy so that rules in the outside world — such as defamation law — could apply online.

Barnaby Joyce picked up the theme last month in relation to rumours about his daughter Bridgette. Dave Sharma’s wife Rachel Lord wrote of the “sting” of false social media comments. 

And this week Peter Dutton joined in. When Leigh Sales asked him about the prime minister’s truthfulness, Dutton swivelled immediately to social media for enabling “all sorts of vicious allegations”.

There’s a large pile of grievance to be built. But how real is the concern for middle Australia?

Youth mental health is a (silent) crisis

Crikey understands political polling conducted in a NSW marginal seat revealed that youth suicide had become the major concern of undecided voters, above the economy and the environment. That might subside but the finding was unexpected.

The Liberal-affiliated Menzies Research Centre this month published a study, Strengthening Online Safety, with the tagline “Empowering Australian parents to keep their children safe online”.

The study summarised research which shows that indicators have gone backwards over the last decade:

  • Obesity is up in five- to 24-year-olds, linked at least in part to the lack of activity while kids are on a device
  • Anxiety levels are up for 18- to 24-year-old males, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
  • Suicide is the leading cause of death for 15- to 24-year-olds
  • There was a direct link between time spent on social media and increases in disordered eating behaviours and distorted thoughts of body shapes, according to a Flinders University study.

At the same time, the study cited the increase in time children spend on devices.

All these findings apply up to the year or two before the pandemic and have shown decade-on-decade declines.

And then came COVID. According to one of the country’s leading mental health specialists, Professor Patrick McGorry, governments took steps to counter the shadow pandemic of mental health. “However,” he told The Australian, “these measures have failed to prevent waitlists from ballooning, and a rising tide of young people surging into emergency departments with a nasty cocktail of intense distress, suicidal behaviour, anorexia and complex mood disorders. This is not transient or mild distress but mostly moderate to severe illness.”

Research conducted by Menzies in September this year found 79% of Australians were more concerned about the dangers of leaving children unsupervised online than they would be about leaving them unsupervised in a playground.

So who’s to blame?

In short: the giant tech baddies, Apple and Google.

In September, The Wall Street Journal revealed internal Facebook research which found that 40% of teenage Instagram users in the US and UK who reported feeling “unattractive” said the feelings started when using Instagram. Teenagers told Facebook’s researchers that they felt “addicted” to Instagram and wanted to check it less often, but didn’t have the self-control to rein in their usage.

The Menzies Research Centre cited three prime examples of the steps tech giants had taken which made it nearly impossible for parents attempting to exert some control:

  • In 2018, Apple removed parental control and screen time management apps from the App Store 
  • Apple and Google treated business and personal users differently when it came to the development of apps which provide safety and security features
  • Google and Apple declared that the age of consent was “effectively 13” — the age at which users can establish their own accounts rather than being part of a family sharing account.

The killer message

In the hands of a skilled political campaigner, the message is simple: we understand what families are going through and we will ensure you have the power to protect your children.

What’s less clear is how to do it.

Menzies points to legislation and government action already underway in the USA, the UK and Europe. It argues that the anti-competitive behaviour of the large tech companies is making it harder for parents, and that there is a “clear justification” for the government to intervene on competition grounds to protect against practices that work against the public interest. 

Will it work?

For a prime minister looking for an issue which differentiates him from his opponent — one which allows him to sell himself as a conviction politician with values and to portray himself as understanding the anxieties of families — this ticks a lot of boxes. 

And taking on the tech giants will always have the enthusiastic backing of the major publishers, News Corp and Nine.