Albanese is taking away social media for children but hanging out mistletoe for AI. It's magical thinking | Peter Lewis

"I'm blaming Santa. As 2025 reaches its inevitable endgame, I can't help thinking we have all become gullible children enthralled by the promise of tech cornucopia, refusing to see the folds in our logic because deep down we don't want to break the magic. While the federal government prepares to take the toys off the children with its world-first social media ban, it is hanging out the stockings for the self-same tech overlords to fill with new goodies via its light-touch National AI Plan."

"These inherently contradictory policies punctuate a year where, for all the focus on the one-sided domestic contest, the main political challenges have moved into a virtual arena built and controlled by the most powerful corporations the world has ever seen. While the Albanese government has emerged triumphant on the home front, its stewardship of the national interest in the helter-skelter advance of technology has been less than glorious."

"As our final Guardian Essential report of the year reinforces, the under-16s social media ban that comes into force on Wednesday is an effective piece of retail politics that purports to wind back the clock to a simpler time where teen angst was not a commodity for commercial exploitation. To what extent to do you support or oppose the current ban on social media for children under 16 years old?"

The federal government implemented a world-first ban on social media access for under-16s while simultaneously advancing a light-touch National AI Plan. The under-16s ban reflects parental anxiety about surveillance and the attention economy but has been criticized as performative and shallow. The policy preserves the extraction and exploitation model for users over 16, potentially turning algorithmic attention into an aspiration for youths approaching adulthood. Major political challenges have shifted into virtual arenas constructed and controlled by powerful global tech corporations. Government stewardship of national interest amid rapid technological change has been inconsistent and contradictory.

Read at www.theguardian.com