There is a strange quiet descending upon the digital avenues of Australia, a muffled hush that feels more like an admonition than a reprieve. The government, wrapped in the familiar guise of concern legislated to ban children under 16 from social media then rushed the amendments through before Parliament rose Christmas.

Why the urgency? Perhaps the psychic pain felt by a party once again abandoning the marginalised communities it was elected to protect is just too unbearabable.

It’s not shame. Shame doesn’t live here, not in these halls. Shame has no claim on this administration, not on its words, nor its deeds, nor the empty echoes of its promises.

To some, this law seems a reasonable precaution, a way to shield the fragile minds of youth from the storm of cyberbullying and the predatory darkness lurking online. Yet, as with all such mandates, the lines between protection and suppression blur, leaving the most vulnerable to stumble, unseen and unheard, at the edges of this brave new policy.

When we speak of children, we often forget to ask which children we mean. Whose children will find the doors to these platforms closed, not out of prudence but poverty, indifference, or neglect? Whose voices will grow fainter, muffled not by the law but by the circumstances into which they were born?

This ban, like many others before it, operates under the assumption of equality. But we know better, don’t we? We know that some homes lack even the barest scaffolding of care, let alone the watchful eyes of an engaged guardian.

For children living in these shadows—those in foster care, in homes marked by violence, or simply in households too overwhelmed to notice—their connection to the world, to each other, and to the possibility of something more is often tenuous at best. Social media, for all its flaws, has been a lifeline. It is where queer kids find solace in communities that do not shame them, where the lonely stumble upon friendship, and where a young Black girl in the suburbs can discover that her brilliance, her defiance, her beauty, are not anomalies but threads in a vast, vibrant tapestry.

Cut the chord

To sever this connection under the guise of safety is to ignore the delicate balance many young people maintain in a world that so often excludes them. It is to insist that safety is worth more than expression, that sheltering from harm is better than confronting the messiness of life head-on. And it is to forget that the most profound harms often come not from the stranger in the digital void but from the silence imposed by those who would rather not listen.

What of the rural children, isolated by geography, who turn to the internet not for distraction but for possibility? What of the indigenous youth, whose stories and struggles are often dismissed by the mainstream, but who find in social media the tools to reclaim their narrative? Are these children to be sacrificed on the altar of well-meaning bureaucracy?

The policy makers will argue, of course, that the risks outweigh the rewards, that the damage wrought by unchecked access to the internet is too great to ignore. But they will not mention the unintended consequences. They will not speak of the children already on the margins, who will not be lifted by the promise of protection but plunged deeper into their isolation.

In these times, when the instinct to regulate is so often born of fear rather than understanding, we must resist the temptation to conflate control with care. A ban like this, no matter how well-intentioned, cannot replace the work of fostering resilience, of teaching young people how to navigate the complexities of a digital world rather than simply barring them from it.

We must ask ourselves, always, who benefits and who bears the burden. The children with attentive parents, with the privileges of stability and access, will weather this change. But for those who rely on social media as a lifeline, a mirror, or a platform, the silence that follows will not be peace but absence.

And so, Australia must decide: does it care more for the illusion of safety or the reality of equity? For in this silence, some voices may never find their way back.