A renowned American academic and author has urged Australia to “slay” the social media “monsters” created by his home country’s tech giants, as state governments and the Commonwealth look to clamp down on largely unfettered access to online platforms among young children.

Speaking at a summit jointly organised by the NSW and SA governments, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt — who is known for books including The Anxious Generation and The Coddling of the American Mind — expressed support for Australian legislative efforts to impose more stringent age restrictions on social media use.

His remarks were delivered to an audience the SA government said was made up of policymakers, digital media experts, and specialists in mental health and education, as well as parents.

The gathering also heard from several young people about their detrimental experiences online, including one girl who was “being sexually harassed online” when she was as young as 12.

In a video address to open the second day of the summit in Adelaide, after yesterday’s opening day in Sydney, Professor Haidt began by commending Australia “for leading the way in cleaning up the mess that America made for the world”. 

“American tech companies created most of the internet in the 1990s. We were all so excited about it that our Congress passed two terrible laws to help the internet grow without any guard rails,” he said.

“Now, three giant companies compete fiercely over every minute of our children’s waking consciousness — Meta, Snap and ByteDance.

While Professor Haidt insisted he was someone who “loves technology”, he said he was “thrilled” by recently announced moves in Australian jurisdictions to impose social media bans among young children, and warned that the current ease of exposure to graphically violent, sexual and predatory content was driving adverse outcomes in education, mental health and physical wellbeing.

“The fact that these platforms put kids in contact with strangers who are trying to get them to do things, and who are sometimes trying to reach them for sex — this is just madness that we allow this,” he said.

‘The companies will have to act’

Professor Haidt said that, due to the “polarised” state of affairs in the United States, reform would not be led by his country — and that it was up to other nations to set an example to the rest of the globe.

“They will never do it if not forced to. We need to force them. We need to free kids from these traps by raising the age for opening social media to 16.”

Following Professor Haidt’s address, the summit heard from young people including Chloe Wyatt-Jasper, who said she was not even a teenager when she first used social media.

“I didn’t tell anyone for ages, and I ended up telling my friend and she had a go at the person and the whole thing happened and we got in trouble.

“One of the biggest issues with social media is that we don’t know what to do when those things happen.”

Ms Wyatt-Jasper said while some of her peers would “probably not agree with me”, imposing restrictions on social media use would “actually be a good thing”.

‘You better do something about this’

University student India Ciura told the assembly that she was using social media from the age of 11, and said while it came with a “sense of community”, many users “never switched off”.

“There definitely was more danger at that age,” she said.

“Peers messaging you, asking you to send images you don’t really want to send.

“It’s the one part that your parents aren’t involved in so there’s definitely freedom to that — but it is very, very easily abused.”

SA Premier Peter Malinauskas said he was prompted to put his mind to the subject of social media when wife Annabel was reading one of Professor Haidt’s works.

“That sincerely was the genesis of actually putting our minds to what can we do as a state government in conjunction with the state parliament to make a difference.”

Earlier today, federal Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said social media companies were failing in their responsibility to tackle the issue.

“We also know through our age assurance trial, which is underway right now, that the platforms have the capability to undertake this kind of enforcement themselves,” Ms Rowland told ABC News Breakfast.

“We have seen that in recent weeks with Meta releasing its own version of Instagram for young people, limiting access under certain settings.

“Penalties do provide that back-stop for regulators to ultimately incentivise platforms to do better.”

The summit will hear from Ms Rowland this afternoon, as well as ASIO director-general Mike Burgess.