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The Social Media Ban is Popular with Gen Z

Despite blanket media coverage of concerned parents and angry youths, the generation that grew up with social media overwhelmingly believe there should be tighter restrictions for kids. Deloitte Australia’s national telco, media and entertainment sector lead, Peter Corbett, explains.

The news that the Federal Government will move to legislate a minimum age to access social media has gone off like a firecracker in the media. You can’t open the paper or turn on the TV without seeing a picture story featuring concerned parents, or an interview with a defiant and oppositional member of Gen Z or Gen Alpha.

Given this coverage, you might assume this is yet another example of policy where public support is divided generational lines: Tech-averse baby boomers are strongly in support while tech-savvy Millennials and Gen Zs are united in opposition.

It’s a good narrative, but lacking nuance. As part of the recently released Deloitte Media & Entertainment Consumer Insights Report, we asked more than 2,000 Australians across five generations their thoughts on social media age restrictions. The results were surprising: Gen Z is as supportive – if not more – of such restrictions as older generations.

An incredible 91% of Gen Zs in our survey agreed that “there should be stronger restrictions on children’s access to social media,” compared to 90% of respondents overall. Furthermore, just over one-third of Gen Zs supported a blanket ban for users under 16. While slightly lower than the 56% average support among all respondents, it’s still a significant figure given the centrality of social media in young Australians’ lives—averaging 10 hours a week, around four hours more than the overall average.

Even more striking, Gen Z appears to be substantially reducing their time spent on socials. Last year, the average social media usage for Gen Zs was 12 hours and 45 minutes per week, but this has dropped by a notable 20%. So why the shift?

There are a few factors driving this. The first is that Gen Z is uniquely attuned to the mental health and wellbeing impacts of social media overuse and appear to be consciously limiting the time spent on social platforms. And if they are not doing it of their own volition, their parents are. Around 70% of respondents with children are concerned about the wellbeing impacts of social media and more than half have used parental controls to limit what their children can access online.

The second factor is trust. More than half of Gen Z get their news primarily through social media and other digital aggregators. They have no doubt run up against the AI-generated content wave that is cascading across the social media landscape and have the digital literacy skills to identify it.

Whether this content is intentionally misleading or otherwise, it appears to be particularly off-putting to younger social media users and something of an engagement-killer. Its prevalence might also explain why Gen Zs are more likely to have a positive view of establishment media than baby boomers, even if they are far less likely to get their news from legacy sources on a day-to-day basis.

The final major factor that may be driving Gen Zs to log off relates to privacy concerns. Although younger Australians are more confident in their ability to keep their personal data secure online, they, like many other generations, are increasingly seeking transparency and privacy controls on social platforms to feel secure in their online interactions.

This also means that Gen Zs are increasingly acting more responsibly online, which can flow through to usage: Consciously sharing less personal data can impact the ability of algorithms to keep serving up personalised content, leading to lower overall engagement and less time spent online.

While these findings are far from conclusive regarding how the totality of young Australia feels about the government’s new social media restrictions, they are instructive and hint at a wider diversity of perspectives than is captured in the often-reductive discourse surrounding the issue.

To successfully navigate this policy, the government must engage with a wide array of perspectives—including those of younger Australians. While Gen Z may not have a direct voice in Canberra, their growing awareness of the impacts of social media should not be underestimated.

If there’s one takeaway from these findings, it’s that Gen Z is not a passive participant in the digital debate—they are shaping it.

First published by Mumbrella. Read original here