Leo Puglisi was just 11 when he started an online news channel.
What was a passion project in his last year of primary school has grown into a 24/7 streaming service that has reported through bushfires and a pandemic, and featured interviews with two prime ministers.
Puglisi, now 17, has recruited 10 teenagers across Australia — almost all of whom are still in high school — to run 6 News across YouTube, X, Instagram, TikTok and a Web site.
Photo: Reuters
If the government had banned teenagers under the age of 16 from social media six years ago, his life now would be different.
“6 News wouldn’t have existed,” Puglisi says. “It would have really just taken away something I love doing. It is something I’m passionate about. It is something people turn to now as a source of news. But that would have all been stripped away.”
Last Thursday the federal government’s social media ban for under-16s passed in the Senate. The bill is introducing the term “age-restricted social media platforms” into the Online Safety Act. This will apply to platforms including TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, X and Reddit.
Photo: AP
While the government introduced the bill due to major concerns about the mental health effects of social media on young people, some experts are wary the ban may backfire. For some teenagers creating content online, the ban may close doors on opportunities and stifle creativity and growth, they say.
ONLINE COMMUNITIES
Puglisi’s channel has been built by teenagers as young as 13 engaging with its work then reaching out to get involved.
“They are all just other young people passionate about elections, or journalism and media, and really wanted to be able to do this,” he says.
The ban “does stifle creativity for young people,” Puglisi says. “It would just take all these opportunities away.”
Maggie Perry, 15, has been reporting for 6 News since she was 13. She says “there are just so many avenues” of opportunity for teenagers on social media – “so many infinite possibilities that just don’t exist in the real world”.
“I love having an audience to communicate my ideas [to],” Perry says. But she “mainly finds it really fun.”
“So many people have online communities … They might have niche interests but on social media there always is space for that.”
The social media ban, however, means she “wouldn’t be able to do anything for 6 News at all.”
“I wouldn’t be able to use any of my platforms, except maybe YouTube.”
Maggie, who has reported on elections, is followed on social media by MPs.
“Even they, I guess, have voted for me to be banned from social media.”
For Will Haynes, a 16-year-old musician, social media has been a way to connect with artists and listeners globally. He has been making music since he was 13, and started posting to social media shortly after.
OPENING DOORS
“It has definitely opened doors for me,” he says. “It has definitely helped me connect with so many people in the industry and different artists, and it’s also helped me expand my reach and get new people onboard.
“And there’s an element of it that I really like in the sense that you can craft your online persona and your brand as an artist.”
Haynes opened for Budjerah in March and performed with him at the Vivid festival in Sydney this year.
“I feel like both those opportunities were through social media and Gmail,” Haynes says.
“I also feel like my audience [is] sort of building in other countries … was probably thanks a lot to Instagram reels and YouTube.”
Haynes concedes there are downsides to social media.
“Constantly making content on social media is super exhausting,” he says, adding: “It can also be demoralizing if you don’t get a huge audience.”
But he says a social media ban would have “definitely impacted me as a young musician.”
“Maybe it would have allowed me to focus more on the music itself … but I definitely think in a negative way it would have been so much harder to grow.”
SAFETY ISSUES
The ban comes in response to concerns about the mental health effects of social media on young people, including issues surrounding body image, bullying and other harmful content.
The communications minister, Michelle Rowland, said while social media could be “a source of entertainment, education and connection with the world and each other” for too many young Australians it could be harmful.
Rowland also pointed to eSafety research showing parents found online safety one of their biggest challenges.
But Amanda Third, co-director of the Young and Resilient Research Center at Western Sydney University, is wary that debate has been driven by parental anxiety. She is a signatory on an open letter by social media experts to politicians raising concern the ban may be harmful.
“I know that we are not doing enough as a society to support parents to do their job, to raise children in the digital age,” she says. “But social media is firmly integrated into the everyday lives of children and young people.
“They use it to facilitate a whole range of things that support their wellbeing, their proper growth and development, their rights to participation, their health, their education, a whole bunch of different things, including having fun.”
Third says she is aware of the “very clear counter-argument that all people have been learning about themselves without social media for millennia.”
“But the fact is, our children will grow into a world where digital technologies of various kinds and social media … are dominant.
“We need to introduce them incrementally, with support and guidance into the world that they will inhabit.”
That US assistance was a model for Taiwan’s spectacular development success was early recognized by policymakers and analysts. In a report to the US Congress for the fiscal year 1962, former President John F. Kennedy noted Taiwan’s “rapid economic growth,” was “producing a substantial net gain in living.” Kennedy had a stake in Taiwan’s achievements and the US’ official development assistance (ODA) in general: In September 1961, his entreaty to make the 1960s a “decade of development,” and an accompanying proposal for dedicated legislation to this end, had been formalized by congressional passage of the Foreign Assistance Act. Two
March 31 to April 6 On May 13, 1950, National Taiwan University Hospital otolaryngologist Su You-peng (蘇友鵬) was summoned to the director’s office. He thought someone had complained about him practicing the violin at night, but when he entered the room, he knew something was terribly wrong. He saw several burly men who appeared to be government secret agents, and three other resident doctors: internist Hsu Chiang (許強), dermatologist Hu Pao-chen (胡寶珍) and ophthalmologist Hu Hsin-lin (胡鑫麟). They were handcuffed, herded onto two jeeps and taken to the Secrecy Bureau (保密局) for questioning. Su was still in his doctor’s robes at
Last week the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said that the budget cuts voted for by the China-aligned parties in the legislature, are intended to force the DPP to hike electricity rates. The public would then blame it for the rate hike. It’s fairly clear that the first part of that is correct. Slashing the budget of state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) is a move intended to cause discontent with the DPP when electricity rates go up. Taipower’s debt, NT$422.9 billion (US$12.78 billion), is one of the numerous permanent crises created by the nation’s construction-industrial state and the developmentalist mentality it
Experts say that the devastating earthquake in Myanmar on Friday was likely the strongest to hit the country in decades, with disaster modeling suggesting thousands could be dead. Automatic assessments from the US Geological Survey (USGS) said the shallow 7.7-magnitude quake northwest of the central Myanmar city of Sagaing triggered a red alert for shaking-related fatalities and economic losses. “High casualties and extensive damage are probable and the disaster is likely widespread,” it said, locating the epicentre near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay, home to more than a million people. Myanmar’s ruling junta said on Saturday morning that the number killed had
RSS