Australia has passed legislation that forbids children under the age of sixteen from having social media accounts.  To be clear, this is not a cellphone ban so far as I currently understand it, but rather something targeted at kids’ ability to sign up for social media accounts in the first place.  I guess the feeling is that, once you take the social media out of the phone, the device just becomes this inert piece of irrelevant technology.

Yeah, right.

In the Australian situation, being monitored breathlessly by provincial governments here in Canada who like to make big noises that have little impact, the gatekeepers, the people responsible for ensuring compliance with the age requirements, are the creators and operators of the social media companies that are being shut out of one of their most lucrative markets.  There’s those damned foxes again, in charge of the gate to the hen house, so to speak.

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