Under-16s social media ban will damage youth’s political education

Melbourne: From this week, Australians aged under 16 will not be able to hold an account on many social media platforms. In anticipation of the ban, some social media companies have already begun disabling accounts they believe are held by under-16s.

While the nation’s social media ban is hoped to safeguard young people from the dangers of the online world, it also has the potential to inhibit the development of their political knowledge.

At a time when civics education has been found to be seriously inadequate, this could have major implications for our democracy.

Engaging with political debates and understanding how the political system operates are important characteristics of what is often known as political knowledge.

To build the political knowledge of young people, and to ensure they become “active and informed members of the

community” for the whole of their lives, Australian governments have invested in civics and citizenship programs in schools.

The Australian federated system, however, poses a challenge to these

aspirations. Each state and territory, for example, can have different approaches to teaching young people about civics and citizenship.

The class time that is devoted to the subject also varies, as do teaching methods across, and within, jurisdictions.

Since 2004, national testing has been undertaken every three years to identify the proportion of young people achieving a reasonable level of proficiency in civics and citizenship.

The latest round shows record low results. Nationally at the Year 6 level, just 43% of students achieved the proficient standard.

This is the first time in the test’s history the rate has been less than 50% for this year level.

Even more bleak is the result at the Year 10 level. Just 28% of students nationally achieve the proficient standard.

Furthermore, unless students enrol in a specialist elective unit such as legal studies, they may never engage with content about democracy, or their rights and responsibilities as citizens in class again.

By the time young people finish Year 12, they are either able to vote or on the cusp of being able to vote.