The following blog post is written by Rachael, a member of the Embrace Kids Youth Crew. It reflects her personal experiences and perspectives and does not necessarily represent the views of The Embrace Collective.
For better or for worse, the digital world is now an extension of the one we know. No longer a space that we can choose to opt out of, it’s now fundamentally and inseparably a part of life.
As a young person, I am also often assumed to be the most tech-savvy. I hate to disappoint, but the reality is that half the time I can’t get the damn sound to work. I’ve also found that young people are often perceived as passive victims of social media… but the reality is more complex.
If you’re not familiar with the conversation around the upcoming social media restrictions, the Australian eSafety Commission is preparing for a social media ‘ban’ (also termed ‘delay’ or ‘restriction’) which will require age-restricted social media platforms (Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Threads, X, YouTube, Kick and Reddit) to take “reasonable steps” to prevent Australians under the age of 16 from creating or keeping an account, starting December 10 2025.
As someone who has lived with an eating disorder for essentially all of my adolescence and early adulthood, I absolutely can attest to the harms of digital spaces. At times it has been a bar for comparison… and in my instance not so much of bodies but of food habits, happiness, exercise accolades, success and beyond. At other times (and even simultaneously), it has been a space for community, connection, belonging, self-compassion and hope.
It’s not always the devil it’s frequently made out to be… AND sometimes it is.
Sure, social media poses threats… so, what’s the solution? How do we empower, support and equip not just young people but everyone to utilise the positives and navigate the negatives safely?
I, like many others, fear the consequences of the approaching ban will greatly outweigh any of the benefits we might see come from it. My concern is that a blanket ban will not create the results we’re hoping for (and needing)… they’ll just shift the problem.
What I’ve learned and what I’m still learning is that a multiplicity of things continue to be missed in these conversations: the risks we fear exist in every part of life, not just online.
When I talk about risk, I do not just mean the obvious. I mean the full suite. Absolutely, the scary and pointy-end concerns like sextortion, blackmail, scamming, grooming, catfishing, phishing and beyond. But I also mean the threats that we encounter more passively and casually. The comparison, anxiety, fear, social phobia and other subtleties. This concept relates to all of these, but for the sake of keeping this less confronting, I’ll talk about the latter.
I take great issue with the way eating disorders and body image concerns are consistently blamed on social media. Absolutely, it is a part of the conversation and one that can’t be ignored, but it is also overused as a scapegoat that diverts accountability away from the societal normalcies and insidious messages that surround us.
Body comparison does not just exist online. Diets are spoken about nonchalantly over family dinner. The traffic light system that ranks food on a moral hierarchy is still the standard of ‘healthy eating’ in schools and throughout our major health establishments. Those working in clinical roles are still fundamentally taught that the larger a person’s body, the poorer their health. Many of our role models still talk about their own bodies with a level of shame and disgust that they’d never show to others. Children are still often weighed in schools and taught how to log calories in health class (though this is no longer recommended!). Especially in my own experience, eating disorders are far beyond image comparisons on social media and much deeper than body ideals. I say in no uncertain terms, I am tired of seeing social media as a scapegoat.
Whilst I could continue this list into eternity, the key point here is that the people and the messages behind the content we fear still put us at risk (of varying kinds) every day in the world around us.
The need for safety from these risks doesn’t cease at 16.
Young people are a priority population for good reason, especially when it comes to anything directly related to health. Growing bodies and minds are far more vulnerable to harm (emotionally, psychologically, physically and otherwise) than a fully developed adult. Children and young people who are learning to navigate the world need and deserve safety, which they often don’t have the expertise to adequately build alone. That said, safety is a need and a right not just for young people, but for all humans. 8, 18, or 80, we ALL still require security and stability. This is not just physical, emotional, psychological, cultural and beyond — it is now also digital. I’ve seen fully grown adults and older generations more negatively impacted by social media than young people.
Are we ever really safe?
A hard truth, and one that rarely gets acknowledged, is that we are never completely safe.
As someone who has lived through complex trauma, this is terrifying. I live in a state of fear, constantly. I shudder at unknown phone numbers, terrified they will tear my life apart as I know it and strip me of my freedom. I am hyperaware that anything I create opens me up to criticism, and that my words will land me in hot water. Even when I have no reason to fear, I find myself bracing for something awful. The reality is that there is never any guarantee that we are completely safe. The entrenched discrimination, challenge and uncertainty is not easy to make peace with and is something that can be (and for me already has been) paralysing. It is with that that I find myself in agreement with the cliche that the fear of danger is often more dangerous than any danger itself.
Fear exists for a reason and has played a key role in the neurobiological evolution of humanity… but as the world has become increasingly busy, stimuli that once represented danger, and as such elicited a biological fight or flight response, are now part of daily living.
This is a common argument against social media, and for good reason. My curiosity comes from the perspective that this is not limited to social media, and that, sometimes, having navigable online spaces is a lot more accessible and a lot less anxiety-provoking than the world in its essence. It can help us navigate these experiences and situations in a way that is actually less overwhelming.
The point is that social media is inherently a tool — something that can be utilised to make the world safer, more navigable and easier. It only becomes treacherous when we overlook and avoid the risky parts of it. Through avoidance, we deny ourselves the opportunity to develop and hone skills to create a higher level of safety. Those tools are our protective factors, not just in the short term but also in the long run. They form the cumulative wisdom that enables us to manage risk. In the context of social media, we can know the dangers, but still allow the space, dignity and agency to explore them. It isn’t negligence — it’s giving the tools and developing the protective factors as opposed to ruling it out.
Social media is an accessible form of community
Digital spaces are now extensions of community, identity, expression, and belonging… particularly for those experiencing marginalisation and layered forms of adversity that impacts their ability to engage in the sometimes terrifying social landscape.
Again, no contesting the fact that there are dangers. However for many (including myself), social media has been a way to interact with the world when it hasn’t been physically or practically accessible. When nobody in your immediate circle can relate to you, there will be people online who do. In fact, the likelihood is that there are entire communities that find joy, pride and connection in the identities that the world at large marginalises and discriminates against. For me, it is in these spaces — and ONLY in these spaces — that I can be authentically myself, and after a lifetime of masking, there are no words coherent enough to communicate exactly what value that holds.
Sure, these spaces can exist in the real world too, but what about the times when anxiety is so debilitating that we can’t leave the house? Or when our spoons (disabled folks’ way of colloquially talking about their energy levels) are so low that anything more than a text is too exhausting? My concern (and one I know is shared by many parents and carers of young people with disabilities or experiencing mental health challenges) is that removing access to these spaces doesn’t build safety — it builds desperation, isolation, and secrecy.
We cannot teach independence, agency, or responsible decision-making if we simultaneously remove the ability to practise them.
Skill development requires… well, practise.
Supported practise.
Guided practise.
Not bans, walls or fear-based restriction.
The things we are scared of take place all around us, and as much as ignorance certainly can bring bliss, restricting their presence in an online space will not go far in creating safety. Let’s talk about these things not just in digital spaces — let’s understand them, how we might navigate them if we encounter them, how to recognise unsafe situations, and how we can build strategies rather than bury the challenges we face.
If our response to danger is avoidance, we don’t eradicate the danger — we just hide from it. Banning or heavily restricting social media use may shield young people from certain risks temporarily, but it does nothing to equip them for the risks that exist elsewhere or the ones they’ll encounter later. It also fails to build the protective factors we know improve long-term wellbeing: digital literacy, self-awareness, critical thinking, healthy boundaries and community support.
Avoidance feels safe in the moment, but it creates fragility. Empowerment creates resilience. Real safety is not built by pretending danger doesn’t exist — it’s built by ensuring people have the skills, agency and community they need to face it.
So what CAN we do to support young people?
Young person or not, there are many ways to protect yourself (not completely, but more) when engaging with online content.
In my experience, one of the most helpful things I did was start to change up what I was engaging with to the greatest degree I was able to. It’s easy to fall victim to algorithms and insidious cycles of content consumption that perpetuate themselves. But with the right tools and conscious effort, there are ways we can create distance.
The first step I took was to block and mute the profiles that repeatedly brought up shame, fear and inadequacy. Instagram has also added a feature allowing you to reset your suggested content, which I highly recommend if you’re finding yourself repeatedly seeing content that doesn’t sit comfortably.
Another recommendation is to follow accounts that promote body acceptance and neutrality — not just towards bodies of different sizes but also different races, gender identities, abilities and beyond — such as:
Perhaps my biggest hope for parents and caregivers would be to start the conversation. To create a space where your young people feel safe to talk about what they might see without being reprimanded or shamed, especially after the ban comes into play.
Talk about real bodies and call out unrealistic standards, role model a healthy relationship with food and avoid talking about food in terms of ‘treats’, ‘junk’ or ‘bad’ (the same goes for holding others as ‘good’ or ‘superfoods’). Both online and offline, it is so important to act as a positive role model — don’t allow yourself to shame and criticise your body in front of young people or pass comments on their food choices.
Let’s develop tools to help young people curate their feeds with content that makes them feel good, uplifted, included and represented, instead of marginalised and disempowered. Let’s shift accountability to the corporations that perpetuate harm and utilise algorithms for money instead of for collective wellbeing. Let’s support young people to distinguish fact from fiction online and to be informed consumers of content. Let’s build and strengthen protective factors as opposed to creating secrecy, silence and avoidance of harms that affect all members of society, well beyond the age of 16.
This conversation is far from over — these recommendations need to be explored and enacted in much greater scope.
We live in a new age. Like it or not, digital media and the access it provides to information, community, and identity is now part of how we live. Removing social media isn’t just removing an app but an entire mode of communication that now sits alongside in-person connection, not beneath it. Not having access to these digital spaces is no longer neutral… rather, it is inhibiting. It restricts how we learn, how we engage with the world, and how we participate in modern life. The conversation shouldn’t be about whether this age exists (it does), but about how we navigate it safely, meaningfully, and with agency.
Protecting the problem does not create a solution
This is perhaps the hardest truth of all: many “protective” policies and bans do not actually protect the people at risk, but the systems, behaviours, and perpetrators causing the harm. When we restrict or ban social media use, the danger doesn’t evaporate. The individuals who exploit, manipulate, scam, groom, and harm young people don’t suddenly disappear — they simply move to less visible spaces. Their behaviour becomes harder to detect, harder to report, and harder to address. In many ways, these bans shield perpetrators from accountability rather than safeguarding victims.
Because the victims still exist. Because justice is still absent. Because the risks persist without being adequately addressed. They simply present in subtler, more hidden forms.
If we only focus on restricting access, we miss the actual problem: the people, structures, and cultures that create harm in the first place. The closest we will come to achieving real safety is through tools, literacy, support, and community around young people so that they can move through that world with strength and clarity. With the right tools and guidance, social media can become something young people can navigate safely, not something they need to be shielded from.
