Malaysia will ban social media for anyone under 16 starting in 2026, requiring age verification with national ID. Australia, Denmark, and Norway are doing the same. Jonathan Haidt and other researchers link social media to rising anxiety, depression, and self-harm in children, especially girls.
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Malaysia moves to ban social media for kids under the age of 16 Malaysia is set to become the latest country to crack down on children's access to social media. According to the Associated Press, the government has approved a plan to ban accounts anyone under 16 in the year 2026. Platforms may be required to verify users ages through national ID cards, passports. As part of a broader effort to cut down on cyberbullying scams and online exploitation, other countries are moving in the same direction. Australia's nationwide ban for under 16s takes effect in December, with enormous penalties for platforms that break the rules. Denmark and Norway are both advancing similar laws. All of this is happening as researchers warn that smartphones and social media are fundamentally altering childhood children. Jonathan Haidt, author of the Anxious Generation, describes the shift from play based childhoods, phone based childhoods, and links it to rising rates of anxiety, depression and self harm. Malaysia's move shows that governments are now acting on these warnings, not just debating them. Okay, so what's the real message here? Hats off to Malaysia. Apparently the people in Malaysia actually care about whether their kids live or die, whether they are injecting poison into their brains. That's why Malaysia is banning all social media, anyone under the age of 16. And apparently Mark Zuckerberg and all the other social media mavens didn't give enough billions of dollars on the leaders of Malaysia. And Malaysia is free to do what's in the best interest of their kids. Good for you. Okay, let's dive a little bit deeper here. This is a huge, huge problem and I'm a huge fan. Let me put my cards on the table of Jonathan Haidt, who is the author of the Anxious Generation, hugely influential work. It is been on the bestseller list now for years. In it, rightfully so, his concept of we're changing people's childhoods from play based childhood, phone based childhood. That is absolutely true. I think it's an utter tragedy the way so many kids don't simply go out and play, go ride a bike, go play to the playground. And we're seeing an entire generation of kids who sit at home staring at their cell phones. Meanwhile mom and dad are often patting themselves on the back. Oh, I'm such a protective parent. Oh, I wouldn't dare let my child walk two blocks to the grocery store, to the convenience store to get milk. Oh, I'm. That would be too dangerous. It's absolutely nonsense. As Jonathan Haidtis pointed has pointed out, going on the streets virtually anywhere in America is dramatically, dramatically safer than than it was 20, 30, 40 years ago, crime, violent crime, crime against children on the streets is at an all time low. Yet meanwhile we are pumping our kids with filth, with nonsense, with greed, with envy to the point where they are going, these aren't his terms. He's a trained psychologist. My turn. They're going crazy. Let's look at some more of the facts here of what's going on. Girls are hit the hardest according to the most recent research. 24, 7 Cyberbullying, gossip exclusion, social comparison online, and guess what? Their rates of suicide going way up, their rates of self harm going way up. The research also shows that heavy daily social media use, three to four hours per day, is directly correlated to worse mental health. Now let me be fair here. There's not 100% definitive causation here. It has not been proven, but that's pretty strong correlation. This is not the same thing as me saying, I did a rain dance today and it rained, therefore I caused the rain. No, I think the evidence is much stronger. Now what this particular social psychologist recommends is no smartphones before the age 14, no social media before 16. Phone free schools and more free play. Now, I know this in my own household, I have to say, look, you, you don't even get access to your cell phone until you go out and play. And this to me is, I don't know if I will call it a tragedy, but it's profoundly sad. I mean, when I was a kid, nobody had to beg me to go outside and play occasionally to turn the TV off. Yeah, I was guilty of watching Gilligan's island and the Beverly Hillbillies and Star Trek every day after school. But I also wanted to go out and play. I wanted to play basketball. I played hide and seek with friends every day. That was considered a normal part of childhood. These days, not so much. Let's look at what's happening around the world. As I mentioned, Australia is starting its ban. It begins December 10th. Kids under the age of 16, they can't have access to social media. Denmark, Norway are moving to age 15 or 16 and there's now enforcement demanding that kids have some kind of proof that anyone has proof with ID cards, passports, because here in the United States they, there are a number of politicians who talk about it, but they are considered, they're instantly written off as, oh, they're anti technology, they're part of the radical left, they want to put rules on the private sector. We hear that time and time again. And yet last time I checked, Australia was not some communistic Fidel Castro Cuba. Hellhole, Australia is a pretty nice economy, pretty nice society there lots of nice stuff in Australia. They somehow have figured out a way to put some constraints on big tech companies without the whole country becoming 1968 Soviet Russia. They somehow did it. So I do want to warn you on the messaging here. One of the things that's happening in the United States is the corporate oligarchs in technology. The Mark Bezos or the Jeff Bezos, the Mark Zuckerbergs, the Elon Musk, they are a part of this group and their venture capitalist friends like Marc Andreessen have developed this ideology that anyone who ever wants to put any rules on them, anyone who wants to say no, let's actually respect traditions of antitrust in America. Let's balance public health with private profit. Those people are no longer the centrist. These people are no longer in the bane of Teddy Roosevelt who is very much in favor of breaking up trust. We're simply going to call anyone who cares about public health and safety a radical leftist extremist who hates America, hates capitalism and they have the belief of this to do it. Elon Musk has a larger megaphone than you do and then I do. He's got all of X and a lot of the other media too. So they're changing the terms of now. Perhaps you think I am too old fashioned and conservative, that I don't want children looking at non stop filth and what could be the equivalent of heroin into their brain and do destroying their brain. I think we need some government restraints. Certainly age gating for social media is something that could easily happen without there being any harms to capitalism or our democracy. We already do it with alcohol. What is your evidence that a 12 year old drinking half a beer is more dangerous than a 12 year old who spends four hours a day playing video games and on social media and on a social media some sort of chat room where there's 25 year olds. What is your evidence? I would suggest you have none. Now I'm not advocating that 12 year olds start drinking half a beer or a full beer either. My point is simply we already age gate certain access to certain things in our society. Age gate driving. You may be a smart, competent, talented, thoughtful 13 year old who's already physically mature. We don't let you drive because on balance 13 year olds driving cars down the highway would be a horrible idea. We can kind of buy into that. We already age gate buying alcohol. You got to be 21 in most cases to buy it. What is your evidence that alcohol is less destructive than the kind of nonsense bullying perversion that kids can get all day long on social media. So this is why I am huge fan of what Malaysia is doing, huge fan of what Australia, what Denmark and Norway are doing. And we need to start forming some political base of support here in the United States for this because again, you can call me a conservative. I think there's something to this idea of make America great again. But part of what made America great 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago is kids actually could play in their childhood. They could go out in the streets and play. They could go to the playground, they would get on a bike, they would play hide and seek. I'm in favor of, of trying to create a society that will in fact get us to go back to those times. If that makes me too much of a conservative, well, I guess guilty as charged.
