Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Here's why I'm more optimistic about the social media ban

Author: Heather du Plessis-Allan,
Publish Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2026, 6:00pm

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The Government has been considering a social media ban for those under 16.

I think I'm probably more optimistic about the social media ban than most people. I do accept that the thing is not going to work, according to the accepted definition of what it means to work, but I think it will work for enough people for it to, in my mind, work - if you follow what I'm saying.

Let me explain:

I have a friend who has a 13-year-old at a private girls' school in Auckland and she's desperate to get her daughter off social media. But she can't, because the girl belongs to a house at school and the senior girls, who are 17 and 18 years old, run the house. They organise activities and communicate through Instagram.

So she can't get her daughter off Instagram because her daughter needs to be on Instagram for school. This ban would put a stop to that, because the school would be forced to acknowledge that it's unlawful for younger girls to be on Instagram. The older girls would then be forced to stop using Instagram for school-related organising.

There is a practical way in which it would help parents get their kids off social media.

Australia is being used as an example of the ban not working. That fails to acknowledge that somewhere between 20 percent and 40 percent of young people in Australia have come off social media. Sure, 60 percent to 80 percent are still on it, but 20 percent to 40 percent are off and that is a success for those families.

My bet is that those numbers would be concentrated in clusters: clusters within a school, a suburb, or friendship groups where parents are actively engaged and banding together to enforce the ban. That is already happening in certain schools, suburbs and friendship groups in New Zealand, where parents are taking it upon themselves to do this.

The best-case scenario here in New Zealand is that, over time, this may become like the anti-smacking legislation. It gradually became socially unacceptable to do the thing.

Smacking your child? Socially unacceptable.

In the future, perhaps letting your underage child use social media will be socially unacceptable too.

Now, I'm not Pollyannaish about this. I know it's not going to work for all kids, largely because the Facebooks of this world want kids on social media, and they cannot be forced to follow every rule in every country because they're now bigger and more powerful than many Governments.

But it will work for some kids if their schools and parents want to use this as a tool to get them off social media.

And 20 percent to 40 percent of kids is better than 0 percent.

What's the saying? Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

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