The Australian government has doubled penalties for social media platforms that fail to protect children, a move that echoes the moral panics of the Victorian era. We are, once again, mistaking legislation for virtue. The new fines, reaching up to AUD 50 million, are aimed at platforms that systematically fail to remove harmful content targeting minors.
But this is a policy that treats symptoms, not causes. Social media is a mirror of society, not its creator. The real problem is not the algorithm but the cultural rot that makes cruelty a commodity.
Rome did not fall because of barbarians at the gate; it fell because citizens lost their civic virtue. Similarly, Australia’s children are not endangered by Instagram or TikTok alone, but by a society that has outsourced parenting to screens and ethics to the state. Doubling fines is a spectacular piece of political theatre.
It signals action without demanding thought. I am not opposed to protecting children. I am opposed to pretending that a bigger stick will teach digital giants to behave.
They will simply pass the cost to shareholders and the burden to bureaucrats. Meanwhile, the underlying crisis of attention, isolation, and meaning deepens. We must ask: why are children online in the first place?
What is missing from their real lives? Until we answer that, every fine is merely a tax on our own negligence.
