Discussion keeps the world turning.
For years we've heard the same warnings.
Algorithms hook kids' attention, screens feed anxiety, and platforms never let go.
The panic finally pushed governments to act, but instead of agreeing on a fix, Nations went in completely opposite directions.
Some set strict age limits, others focused on changing how platforms are built.
A few turned to the law.
Now, over a year into this global experiment, a Tsinghua University report asks the question.
No one's been able to answer to this point.
Did any of it actually help?
Or are we just putting a bandage on a much bigger wound?
We're live from our studios here in Beijing.
This is Roundtable.
I'm Steve Hatherly.
Thank you so much for sharing your time with us today.
And for the show, I'm with Yishan and Feifei.
First up...
Parents worried about screen addiction cyberbullying anxiety, body image issues and the endless pull of algorithms designed to keep their young users online.
What started as a public debate soon turned into government actions.
Countries responded in very different ways.
Australia for example approved one of the world's toughest social media bans for children under 16.
Europe focused more on regulating the design of platforms rather than banning them.
And in the US, the issue has increasingly moved into the courtroom, with lawsuits involving tech companies and saying that they are knowingly creating addictive products for kids.
Now, after more than a year of real-world experiments, we're finally able to ask a question.
Has any of these approaches actually worked?
A new report released by Tsinghua University's School of Journalism and Communication.
It came out on June 29th, uses countries around the world, and Australia in particular, to answer exactly that question.
Fei-Fei and Yushan, good afternoon to you.
Yeah, it's been a year.
Since we I think it's been a year maybe, since we've talked about it on Roundtable, where these big changes were coming in different countries around the world.
Australia, I mentioned it already, banning kids under 16.
And it was one of those situations where we had to wait to see. what the results would be.
And now Tsinghua University, they have waited long enough and they've put out this report.
But I want to start with this question.
You know governments around the world.
They all agreed it seemed that kids needed more protection online.
But the way that they chose to do it is very different from country to country, it seems.
Why was there no uniform dancer?
Well, I think, first of all, it's such a new thing.
I mean, the rise of social media was only within the previous one decade.
And when it comes to regulation, especially even in internet regulation, there are still a lot of testing experiments going on in that.
But overall governments agree that there was a problem when it comes to the rise of social media and their influence, especially on minors and childrens.
But they couldn't find, they couldn't agree on the best, which one is the best solution.
Like the ones that Steve just mentioned.
Some are thinking of banning altogether.
Some are thinking about regulating the platforms themselves.
Others are taking it to the courts and hoping the rulings coming out from the courts can become an example on some level.
Yeah, I guess they looked at what was happening in their culture specifically and then made moves that they thought would be the most appropriate, even though the statistics say that almost all of uh, internet well, almost everybody around the world is connected in some way, shape or form, to the internet, it seems, and most of those, or at least many of those users are young people.
Yeah, and I was so surprised to find out about just how big of a group that young people are making up as per today in terms of becoming the new generation of digital users.
So children.
As reported by UNICEF, children account for roughly one third of all Internet users worldwide.
And they're the one of the largest group of digital users these days.
And the main concern, of course, it falls on the very amount of time that they are spending on social media and online in general these days.
So one WHO survey covering nearly 280000 adolescents across 44 countries found out that problematic social media use rose from 7 in 2018 to 11 in 2022.
So, even though different countries have different measurements, one thing seems to be sure that we Everybody, all of the countries, are worried about our kids.
There's undoubtedly a pandemic connection there.
And that's not really the news.
I mean, they talked about sleep disruption for children, difficulty controlling their online activities.
And then policymakers.
They started looking beyond the content itself and started focusing on the design of social media features like infinite scrolling and autoplay autoplay videos, I mean and then recommendation algorithms.
Those were really heavily criticized for a period of time.
And then, yeah, like we said, they did different things in different countries.
Australia, they introduced the world's first nationwide ban preventing children under 16 from opening accounts on major social media platforms.
That was a major global headline at the time.
In Europe, they focused on platform responsibility through what they call the Digital Services Act.
That requires large platforms to assess and reduce risks to minors.
In the UK...
They have something called the Online Safety Act that they implemented, where a greater legal responsibility is placed on platforms to protect young users.
And then here in China, there's something called Youth Mode.
It's a little bit different.
I think we're going to get to it in a little while.
The measures that were taken in China, especially compared to other parts of the world.
But here's the point.
That was basically like a recap of what's been happening over the last year or more.
And despite all of the different approaches that these governments have taken.
The assumption was that children's online lives would become safer.
So here we are a year later, and this is now where we get into what researchers have found in terms of their evidence from their report, whether these assumptions that the government's made were true or not.
Yeah, exactly.
The report is from Tsinghua University's School of Journalism and Communication and it was released on June 29th.
And researchers first examined how countries around the world are regulating COVID children's social media use, before taking Australia, which is the first country to ban the under 16 year old age from major social media platform.
That was in 2025.
And they looked specifically at this case study to see what really happened after this.
What could be called the toughest policies came into effect when it comes to the use of social media.
It was the toughest policy, according to Australian teenagers, I can tell you that.
They're definitely not happy about that.
So the findings suggest...
Perhaps something that the governments may not have expected.
Yeah, it's something so astonishing.
The fact that changing the law is much easier than changing children's behavior, because they discover that, in order to evaluate Australia's policy, they actually analyzed children.
240 media reports and over 42,000 online comments.
And that also involved 1,000 minors, parents and educators.
And one of the clearest findings just indicates just that many young people simply found another way to get online.
They stay online, but not from the most obvious traceable way.
Like for example, they download VPN.
So VPN downloads nearly tripled around the time the ban was introduced.
So by VPN I mean like getting an app and manually changing their IP so that they're no longer in Australia.
So they can still be a miner, but it shows that they're no longer in Australia.
And then, of course, the downloads of social media platforms not covered by the legislation also increased a lot.
Then the Tsinghua researchers argued this doesn't mean children's desire to socialize disappear just simply because you ban them.
It simply moves into spaces that it becomes harder for them to regulate.
Yeah.
Okay, so you're an Australian teenager at the end of 2025 and suddenly your social media is gone.
So what do you do?
Well, first thing you do, you chat with your friends and you ask all right, what's the solution here?
We got to find some way.
That's why VPN downloads tripled, so that they could hide their location and So that it wouldn't be known that they were in Australia.
Then the ban included certain social media platforms, but it didn't include all of them.
So the downloads of those spiked as well.
Not surprising to me at all that this was the result.
So that was from the kids' point of view.
But parents.
They also were put under a little bit of pressure, if not a lot of pressure, when this happened.
Yeah, because according to that survey by Tsinghua University, more than half of the surveyed parents knew their children were bypassing these restrictions.
And but nearly one third said they tolerated this behavior.
And about half of the educators surveyed also they supported the ban.
But I would assume they some of them were also aware that children have their own segues around this ban.
Finding new platforms, new ways to communicate online.
Yeah.
I think the reason that parents face a dilemma I think I can relate to that is that they know you can't tell them that you are prohibited from entering any social media platforms in the world.
That's not going to solve the problem.
That's going to even soar your relationship with your children.
So what is the other way around?
You are not in the tech company to sort of close every platforms on the universe.
Then there is only one way to tolerate that behavior.
20 years ago, it was so much simpler.
You just remove any TV set, any computer in the house so that the kids have no access.
But today is inevitable.
They can gain access through whatever channel that possibly exists.
In classrooms and the parents' mobile phone, everywhere.
If we look at these results...
Half of the parents knew that their children were bypassing the restrictions, and one third said nah, whatever.
They tolerated it.
Right.
Then half of educators said that they supported the ban.
OK, well, that means half don't support the ban.
So if we look at that bigger picture, the government in Australia says no more social media if you are under 16 years old and the parents say nah, you can find it somewhere else.
And the teachers say, I don't really agree with this anyway.
What message does that send to the kids?
My point is this, is that not everybody was on board with this.
Not everybody that mattered.
And when I say mattered, I mean people in a position of authority to those teenagers.
And that to a kid matters. is a green light to do whatever they want.
Yeah, yeah.
Since my mom and my dad are turning a blind eye towards my new app on my phone and my teachers not really see anything, then I say go with it.
1000% true.
And there's something else the report discovered, too, by the researchers from Tsinghua University.
So they challenged one of the most common assumptions in this debate.
After viewing over 1300 academic review articles, they failed to locate on enough evidence to prove a direct connection between social media use and psychological disorders among minors.
I believe just a while ago there's been a huge lawsuit against a major social media company from the parents in the US Just on the fact that how social media are having such a huge psychological impact on their kids.
But yeah, as some of our studies show, it's not necessarily always the case.
We're not saying that social media is harmless.
It just means that the relationship is far more complex than we can see.
We're not saying it, and also Tsinghua University's report is not saying it either.
Yeah, so more complex than what the major headlines say.
You have a lot of external factors there.
You have family environment.
You have existing mental health conditions.
You have offline relationships.
All of those things together are playing important roles.
And this was mentioned in the report as well.
Yeah, so that is sort of putting us into a spotlight of thinking.
You know, how should we view social media, especially in children's daily life?
I mean, thinking about my kid, she is precisely under the age of 16.
She would be banned of using any social media platforms if she was in Australia.
She's lucky because she was in Australia at some point.
Yeah.
But that was when she was four years old.
I don't think four years old counts as social media user.
She timed that correctly.
Yeah.
But I think that in my family, we didn't proactively introduce her to any social media platforms.
But when she entered school, when she has her own friend circle outside of the family, very naturally I start to notice she knows about Douyin Trends, even though we've never shown her any Douyin videos, any short videos popular online.
Somehow from her friends, from her classmates or just you know, random chatting around her, she started to pick up those popular tunes online, those dance moves that got really popular and some of the celebrities that people you know, young kids, are talking about these days.
So I mean you can't put them in this vacuum dome.
That thinking yeah, And this is what they say is one of the important lessons from Australia's experience is that children, when you take away their social media, it doesn't take away their need to connect with people, with others because, just because it's unavailable.
So then that raised a new question.
If you keep kids off of social media and you find that that's not enough, then is it possible that the government or governments have been focusing on the wrong problem right from the beginning?
Well, people are now moving on to asking more than just what's the minimum age that's suitable for social media?
So previously, the focus was on one side of the issue.
But now we're moving on to asking whether governments should really spend less time on just policing who uses what social media and spent more time shaping how social media works.
So the attention is shifting on the people using social media to the platforms themselves.
And one of the reports still quoting from the Tsinghua University's report.
One of their main conclusions is that children's social needs.
They don't disappear.
So now it comes to the term of just much of the criticism nowadays.
How they're centering on the platform features is equally important than just simply considering under 16 is the bare minimum or if under 15 is the minimum.
Yeah, I think in this sense, according to those Tsinghua researchers, they are not saying that Australia's policy is failing.
I think they are pinpointing on.
You know, banning the use of social media platforms for these age groups only is not going to work.
It's more complex.
You need a more complex and more holistic, systematic policymaking design.
Other than that, I mean, when it comes to social media platforms, even for adults, I mean...
They are designed to pull you in.
They're designed to attract you to use that for 10 hours a day.
And that's because they're business.
They want to generate revenues.
And I think it's very natural for platform companies to design their products in those ways.
And they're not alone.
Right.
Plenty of businesses are designed in a way to make customers.
You go into a fast food restaurant.
The colors in there are designed to make you eat more.
You go into a shopping mall.
The high tempo music is meant to inspire you to buy more, so i think vilifying the other features.
Yeah, is this what, what how?
That's what they're.
I'm kind of dumbfounded, because why are we surprised that they're designed like that?
Because that's how they're going to be successful.
Yeah, but I think that's what the critics would describe this as examples of persuasive design.
That for things like infinite scrolling, autoplay videos, push notification, personalized recommendations, street likes and other features that encourage you to repeatedly checking back onto that app.
And I think it's natural for a platform, from the perspective of the platform companies, to design things in that way.
But when it comes to regulators and policy makers, they are the ones that should be strike that balance between platform companies.
They want to grow.
They want to design more technology to fit better into people's daily life.
Then we have another group in the society that needs our protection, that needs to put a boundary between these kind of features.
That's well said, because it certainly struck me that, Upon the design of any social media platform, did it ever struck you that actually it was not meant for children in the first place?
It was meant for adults who have certain time limits for themselves and perhaps featuring a certain level of discipline.
They know that, yeah, this is so appealing, but yes, I need to pull it out.
I need to stop.
But for kids, it's kind of like the other way around.
They just sunk deeper.
Well, I mean, the focus now seems to be and this is what we talked about, you know, with the UK, where they have a different kind of policy than Australia, where they're focusing more perhaps, on the platform than on the user.
Australia focused on the user, the teenager, right? saying you are not fit, almost, to handle this.
So therefore, we're gonna remove it from your life altogether.
I wanna ask you, Feifei That's a good point Yushan about is it designed for kids or is it designed for adults?
And should there be any difference whatsoever?
Feifei, you're into social media, like you scroll and... A lot.
Okay.
And your daughter is as well?
No, I don't give her a phone.
Oh, so you're the problem.
I'm designing access.
Australia was designing their laws for Fei Fei.
I'm designing my own laws in my own home.
But she borrowed the phone from her grandma or her friends, so she still gets onto platforms like Douyin and Red Note.
And now that's convenient.
Yeah, I created some hurdles on the way.
How does she feel about that?
She right now is OK, because I think it's also.
I'm also constantly telling her you know, being on doing for a long, for long hours is not good for you.
It's not good for your eyesight.
It's not good for your mental health.
It is also not good for a lot of things.
Does she push back and say, but you do it?
Because I try also to constrain.
I think that's.
Another thing is that, as a parent, I know that I need to set an example for my children.
So I also try to scroll my TikTok.
You know, put my TikTok hour in late nights when they were asleep.
At least not in front of her.
Let's talk about China a little bit, because of course China has watched these global experiments unfold.
They've seen what's happening in Australia, in Europe, in the United States.
What lessons have been taken away here?
Because the rules aren't as strict as they are in other countries.
And Australia, of course, the most extreme example.
Yeah, that actually comes down to just how much reliance on foreign social media app a country actually has.
So we talked about how big of a deal or how big of a coverage that the Tsinghua report has been researching on.
But it's not all about Australia.
It's China.
Also about China, too.
And the researchers suggest that countries with well-developed domestic social media industries have generally taken a different approach from countries that rely primarily on foreign platforms.
Oh, interesting.
China has its own platforms developed.
Yeah.
We have our own versions of things and we have our own just Chinese apps too.
And for countries like this, like China, with large domestic platform industry already and well, that's more or less similarly in the US as well we have generally focused on regulation, platform responsibility and product design issues instead of just blank all size fit all kind of ban.
And China has indeed spent several years gradually building a regulatory framework to starting since 2019.
The youth mode we just mentioned Steve, that introduced across major video and live streaming and gaming platforms.
And that's a very important step.
It acts as a firewall or a filter on your phone that can limit screen time and tipping and in-game spending, while promoting educational content to the kids.
So fast forward to 2024, the youth mode expanded to smart devices such as children's watches.
Right.
Yeah.
Around.
The same time, China's regulations on the protection of minors in cyberspace also came into effect, addressing Internet addiction, for example, and cyberbullying and protection of children's personal information, and all that.
So all of these policies reflect on just China's starting point in pulling out some of these policies but really not focusing on just the age.
Yeah. focusing on the fact that young people are online, whether you like it or not.
There is a stat from Beijing Normal University came out in March of this year 82 of Chinese minors are social media users.
So the approach is almost the opposite approach from what Australia did.
Australia said we're going to take it out of your hands because you're not capable of using this responsibly.
China said you're online anyway and we know that, so we're going to make sure that we make it as safe a space as possible for you.
Yeah, I totally agree with that.
Because when it comes to I think, when it comes to a kid's perspective somebody, for example, who is 15 years old, they would be asking.
Who asked my opinions when it comes to my use of social media platforms?
Is it just as simple as just ban them altogether, because you don't believe in my ability to navigate the internet world myself?
And I think putting the focus on regulation, on platform responsibility, on the product design is sort of also teaching them you know, they're going to enter the endless world, the infinity world, universe of social media somewhere along their life.
And they need to know how to navigate, you know, through different platforms and what are the things, how to find the things you want to on these platforms.
It's better to start at an early age than in their 20s.
There's a professor from Renmin University by the name of.
Forgive me if I'm wrong in the pronunciation, Lei Li.
I love this quote.
Today's adolescents are digital natives, and cyberspace has already become one of the spaces in which they grow up.
Cutting them off from the Internet runs contrary to how they're developing.
I was almost going to speak for you, Sean, but I shouldn't.
I grew up in a time when the Internet didn't exist.
It was given to me.
It suddenly appeared like it dropped out of the sky.
It was weird.
It was cool.
It was exciting.
And then along.
Then the Internet was first and people started.
You know, you set up your hotmail account.
Yes.
Whatever.
Which my dad still has a Hotmail account.
I'm like, dude, move on, please.
Anyway, so then came social media and that was given to us.
But for people who were born after the year whatever, 2000.
2010.
Right.
They don't know anything different.
Yeah.
So therefore, the Australia rule to just we're just going to take this away from you.
You think they're not going to figure out another way?
They're natives.
Exactly.
They know better than you how to figure out that problem.
Yeah, that reminds me, you know, when we were young, when we were making the hand gesture of making a phone call, Steve used two fingers as a line line.
But right now for the kids, when they are making a hand gesture of holding a phone Like the letter C Yeah, it's like holding a smartphone.
And very also when it comes to, I have a second child who is more than two years old.
And it's very natural for him to tap on any screen.
I want to ask you about that.
He just know it?
He just know it.
He just tap on any screen.
Does that make you nervous?
No, I think that just resonates with their natives in this digital age.
On some level they're born with the sort of knowledge on.
You know I touch the screen, it will respond to my taps.
I mean that's an interesting perspective, because I think a lot of Parents have the idea that oh, I'm not going to let my baby touch a screen until they're four or three or five or whatever.
But you're saying it's just there's nothing evil about it.
It's just the way life is now.
Just like how we learned to use remote control, pull onto a button and turn on the TV ever since we were kids.
They put their fingers on tablets and start certain programs.
That's their digital literacy.
And by digital literacy.
I think now it moves on to the fact that it shouldn't be just on oh I know how to use this but rather on understanding a holistic thing behind this whole new or more or less new technologies.
Just how, for example, algorithms work, how they are used.
Having this appeal to people that's designed to make you keep on scrolling, and also being capable of recognizing misinformation and manipulated content, is also important.
And that needs to come from some sort of a guidance.
Professor Zheng Ning from the Communication University of China.
Another quote that I love.
If you want kids to learn how to swim, you have to let them get into the water first.
It's all around them.
Social media teach them how to use it in a safe and responsible way.
All right.
So as we come closer to the end of our chat on this topic, what have we learned here?
It's been a year.
Have we learned anything useful as we move forward?
Well, I think the debate used to center around whether governments should regulate social media at all.
But I think today's question is about what kind of regulation actually works.
We talked about Australia's complete ban.
We talked about for EU, US and China, trying to putting more pressure on the platform companies and on the regulations.
But I think the biggest question could be asking maybe there shouldn't be a choice between access and safety.
I mean, children, as we said, grew up online these days.
And the challenge really for us is trying to make the spaces online basically healthier for them, not only for the kids themselves, but also for adults.
I think even for adults, we also want a healthier environment online.
So that really suggests the next stage for regulations when it comes to the Internet universe.
And things may look very different from the first questions that we're asking a couple of years ago.
When are you going to let your daughter have a phone?
When she entered.
Well, I don't have a choice, because when they enter junior high school, they need their phones for a lot of tasks.
So I will junior high, junior high.
You're gonna keep her phone free until.
But she has like, one of the smart watches, so it's a smaller version of mobile phones.
That's cool.
Yeah, that's like a nice little trade-off, i suppose.
Yeah, so I'm always when she asked me mom, when can I have my first phone?
I was like, just continue using your smartphone.
Give it one more year.
Give it one more year.
I've been repeating that for three years now.
Nice.
She's going to catch on eventually.
Yeah.
Well, you know what?
Maybe in 12 months time we can check in again and see if new regulations have kind of been put in place and see how those are working as well.
One thing that I'm almost I mean, it's very far in the distant future.
But what about the next generation?
You know, what's going to be their thing that we're all worried about with them?
Now, with this young generation, we're worried about social media and oh, they're too addicted to it and it's dangerous for them.
I wonder what that thing is going to be.
It's very hard to predict, isn't it?
With AI and so on and so forth.
It's so difficult.
Robots, maybe?
A chip in the brain.
Oh, maybe.
Yeah, there'll be a 14-year-old talking about a chip in my brain.
At that time, we'll be saying, wow, social media was nothing.
