Labour’s announcement to ban social media for under 16-year-olds is a naive solution to a genuine issue.

Throwing out simplistic sound bites denies the reality that banning social media in its entirety means either banning VPNs or using digital ID for everyone - otherwise it’s a fool’s errand and meaningless.

The failure in Australia to implement such laws highlights this and Labour knows it.

Everyone with children wants them protected from the harms of social media, but the threat of everyone needing to lose privacy and freedoms to enable that to happen is what Labour needs to explain to kiwis. 

Ultimately, we need to ask ourselves as a country how far we want the government to overreach into the responsibilities of parents, but most importantly the rights of parents.

If we start down this innocent pathway, it will become very slippery and won’t stop.

Election period promises that sound good should not hide the serious nature of the solution, nor of the seriousness of the problem we all agree should be addressed.

PS

Between 2020-2023 what did Labour ever do about the problem they are now promising to solve.