It’s not the under-16s who need a social media ban – it’s the over-65s

A fortysomething friend of mine, a mother of three who runs her own business and is renovating her new house, recently posted a very cool photo of a slick 1970s living room with one of those sunken sofa “conversation pits” on her Instagram account. Her mother wrote to her, concerned, saying that if this was the plan for the new house, it really didn’t seem very practical, “and I don’t like that ladder thing at all”. Cue my friend explaining the concept of “interiors inspo” to her mum, and of reposting a picture from somewhere else that you didn’t actually take.

In a similar vein, I recently said something online about the beautiful architecture of a church that would be great to get married in. “Oh?? Who to?” came the instant reply from my mother, whose all-seeing eye could give Bridget Jones’s mother a run for her money. Thanks to Mum’s unfettered and seemingly constant access to social media, she misses nothing in my life. Well, apart from my sense of humour. I can’t tell you the number of my posts she has replied to with a series of question marks.

So it is with an eyebrow raised that I notice Australia has banned social media for the young. The federal government in Canberra has implemented a ban on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X (Twitter), TikTok, Snapchat, Kick and Twitch for under-16s, and if a company is found to have allowed access, they face a ban of up to A$50m (about £25m).

YouTube and Reddit – not exactly social media sites – also feature in the ban, so they’re really not messing around over there. I’m certainly not saying it’s a bad thing. No, this ban is probably a very good thing. As the mother of an online teenager, I await their results with bated breath. But I do have to ask if our attention shouldn’t be focused on the over-60s instead?

Given that our parents appear as chronically online as anyone else, and, if retired, have perhaps even more time to spend on the internet, you’d think they would have learned to distinguish idle chit chat from life plans, or to know the difference between some property porn and a picture of what the builders are up to. But they don’t, and if it’s too late for them to learn, they should probably have their internet access revoked.

I feel fairly confident that my very savvy teenager would never fall victim to an online financial scam – but my father has. He stayed up for hours on the phone to some random international “helpline” that was trying to drain his bank account by claiming to be fixing the malware on his computer that they in fact planted there.

I’m not saying that my own phone usage is entirely healthy, or that my daughter doesn’t have too much screentime, but we at least know that you don’t use devices at the dinner table. My mother and her friends, however, will take a photo of you while you’re eating, with food dribbling out of your mouth, upload it straight to their socials and start telling you who’s liked it before you’ve finished chewing.

The number of times I’ve had to suggest that, with it being a special occasion, perhaps we could not be looking at Facebook during a family meal? The teenagers know not to, but the phone etiquette of the retired generation is out of control. These people are lawless, with their endless peering at their Samsungs and their enlarged text iPhones – somebody stop them, please! At least the teens will only post a photo of someone where they’re looking nice, not with their mouths open or their eyes half shut.

Then there’s my friend’s dad, who only discovered Facebook after marrying his third wife, but swiftly used it to reconnect with his second. He sent her a private message saying how he lived such a regretful life these days, how he’d made a terrible mistake and she’d always been the real love of his life. Well, the sentiment might have been real, but his belief that this was a private message was not. He had written it on her public Facebook page, for all their relatives, their various children, and his current wife to read.

A 14-year-old would sooner die than make such a rookie error, and so such platforms are clearly safer with them. It should still be taken off them, obviously, but mainly for the effect that their presence on there has on me.

When my daughter was at primary school, a classmate of hers followed me on Twitter, and reported back to the classroom that I was regularly making jokes on there about being a mum – the absolute horror! Now that my daughter’s at secondary school, a close friend of hers has found me on Instagram, so she got an instant block too, lest she have some thoughts about my thirst traps. Can’t a horny single mum post a miniskirt selfie in peace?

So, my decision on this is final: ban the old and the young from all social media today. The internet should exist solely for middle-aged idiots like me.