The mission of Issues in Perspective is to provide thoughtful, historical and biblically-centered perspectives on current ethical and cultural issues.

In early December 2025, Australia began enforcing a ban on social media apps for children under the age of 16—becoming the first country to do so.  “I’ve always referred to this as the first domino,” Julie Inman Grant, who leads Australia’s online safety regulator, said in remarks. The major platforms have “pushed back,” Grant said, in part because Australia could serve as a proving ground for an approach that has begun to draw interest elsewhere.

The measure is meant to protect children from the pressures and risks of social media, a mounting global concern. These platforms include Snapchat, X, Facebook, Meta, TikTok, Threads and YouTube. “We share the Australian Government’s goal of creating safe, age-appropriate online experiences, but cutting teens off from their friends and communities isn’t the answer,” read a statement from Meta. “This new law will unfortunately restrict teens from these benefits and will result in inconsistent protections across the many apps they use.”

The important aspect of Australia’s regulatory actions is that social media platforms, not teens or their parents, will be responsible for taking “reasonable steps” to prevent under-16 children from managing accounts under the policy. Australia’s approach has opened the possibility of similar social media rules in other countries, including Malaysia and Indonesia, as policymakers debate whether the model is worth emulating. [Critics of the policy argue that online age verification is difficult to implement and could affect adult internet users by risking their anonymity and data.]

• Malaysia plans to impose age restrictions for social media use next year, the Daily Star, a Malaysian outlet, reported. Indonesia has also announced similar plans.
• “Australia is being mentioned as a source of inspiration in some of the draft laws for similar bans in Brazil, the U.K., Spain, Malaysia and Indonesia, so this law is likely to have many followers,” said Urs Gasser, the dean of the School of Social Sciences and Technology at the Technical University of Munich.
• The European Commission is working on an age verification mobile app that would aim to check whether users are over 18 — Spain, France, Greece, Denmark and Italy are testing this template. Age-verification impositions on websites and platforms have downsides, including redirecting traffic to seedy parts of the internet, discriminating against minorities and possibly leading to an uptick in data breaches, The Washington Post has reported.  European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in September that she was “inspired” by Australia’s “bold” social media policy, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.
• The Netherlands has taken a different approach, advising parents to disallow children from using apps such as Instagram and TikTok before 15. “Intensive screen and social media use can be detrimental to children’s (mental) health and development,” according to the recommendations issued by the country’s Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport.
• While similar ideas have yet to gain traction in the United States, a bipartisan group of senators — Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) and Katie Boyd Britt (R-Alabama), along with co-sponsors — introduced a bill earlier this year to impose a minimum user age of 13 on social media platforms, among other efforts at the state and national levels.

Kathleen Parker reports that Australia’s law “was partly prompted by the suicide of 14-year-old Ollie Hughes, who was bullied on social media. Algorithms, which are programmed to engage children for as long as possible including by providing increasingly toxic material, flooded his feed with body-shaming videos and tips on extreme dieting. Ollie’s weight dropped significantly.  He was diagnosed with anorexia just before Christmas in 2023 and took his life on Jan. 9, 2024. His mom, Mia Bannister, launched a crusade, testifying before Australia’s lawmakers.

Mia’s mission is familiar to thousands of American parents waging the same war. In California, hundreds of personal injury lawsuits have been consolidated against companies such as ByteDance, Google, Meta and Snap. Most have been filed on behalf of children who developed addiction, anxiety or eating disorders, or who attempted or died by suicide. Lawsuits are also popping up from school districts and state attorneys general in what is seen as one of the most important mass tort cases of the decade.”

Parker also argues that “Ample scientific research shows social media, mobile phones and video games can lead to childhood addictions. The consequences for mental health range from low self-esteem and depression to self-harm and suicide. A study published in June by JAMA followed more than 4,000 children for four years. It found that addictive social media and phone use was associated with higher risks of suicidal thoughts.  Nevertheless, [before Christmas] a House subcommittee . . . gutted the duty-of-care clause in the proposed Kids Online Safety Act that would have held platforms liable for addictive algorithms that can encourage cyberbullying, sexual behavior, drugs and suicide. The Senate passed the measure in a 91-3 vote in July 2024 . . . Meanwhile, Congress has an opportunity to do something important and hugely popular. Pew Research Center found in October that 81 percent of American adults support requiring parental consent for kids under 18 to create social media accounts. Fifty-eight percent support an Australia-style ban, according to a survey by the Family Online Safety Institute.”

How should we think about all this from a biblical perspective? Moral and spiritual formation is at the heart of any heathy society.  From a biblical perspective, moral and spiritual formation involves at least three dimensions of the human condition that need development and shaping—the heart, the mind and the will. God’s Word, the Holy Spirit and the encouragement and edification that comes from being with likeminded believers shape the heart (being kind, considerate, generous), the mind (being curious, open-minded, having good judgment) and the will (self-control, determination courage).

Is the social media phenomenon a help or a hindrance in the process of moral and spiritual formation? Nicholas Carr, author of a new book entitled Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Are Tearing Us Apart, has written, “Social media is not successful because it goes against our instincts and desires. It’s successful because it gives us what we want.”  More communication does not necessarily lead to more understanding.  “By removing barriers to communication, social media has enabled us to let loose our worst instincts and transmit to a huge audience whatever thougtlet comes to mind . . . Different points of view are seen not as opportunities to learn but as provocations to attack.”

Carl Trueman, professor of biblical and religious studies at Grove City College and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, makes this observation about our technologically saturated world and what it has done to our understanding of humanity: “When human beings are reduced to wills, when bodies are problems to be overcome, and when human relationships are reduced to manipulative power relations to be transcended through technology, all those things that make us human—dependencies, obligations, and those things that flow from them, like kindness, gratitude, altruism—disappear too.”

Furthermore, consider these observations from Fred Greco, Senior Pastor of Christ Church in Katy, Texas:  “I never would have dreamed, even thought my children were born in the days of the ubiquitous home computer, that grade-school children would walk around with a device that would give them access to virtually everything (good and bad) without their parents’ knowledge . . . There is no denying it—social media in its various forms has taken over our society.  Real, physical friendships are cast into the background as ‘virtual’ relationships take center stage.  Most of the children in America get their information, opinions, and eve values from TikTok and Instagram . . . Viral videos, memes, and pictures shape the way that children view the world . . . Social media is filled with sexual images, messages of hatred and cruelty, and calls to rebel against authority.  It is no longer necessary for children to wander out into a hostile world to come under attack—the world floods into our homes every day.”

In his new book, Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America’s Political Crisis, James Davison Hunter delineates the impact this technological revolution has had on our culture, and especially our political culture:  “The techno-utopians at the dawn of social media and the internet . . . believed that the new information technologies would prove a singular benefit to democracy by giving a voice to all.  With no one controlling access, there would be no censorship. No one would be sidelined; all would be recognized.  As a marketplace for ideas and information, it would be impossible for even the most powerful to foist a distortion or lie upon a credulous public.  But as it turned out, the new social media created the perfect conditions for what has become something akin to epistemic anarchy—and with it, the proliferation of misinformation and worse.”

Chris Larson is certainly correct when he argues that “There is plenty of suspicious and even outright evil activity surrounding technology and how centralized activity by sinful humans pridefully seeks to make themselves gods, enslaving others into their hell-bent ambitions.  Knowledge, when in the hands of corrupt sinners, is prone to unintended consequences, corruption, and idolatry.  We need only look at the early pages of Genesis to see humanity’s depravity in using tools to usurp God and harm neighbor.”

The increasing volume of disinformation generated through social media and AI technology makes the discernment between truth and falsehood increasingly difficult.  Eventually, this could lead to more social chaos and further disintegration of institutionalized authority.  Therefore, we must remember that Christians are called upon by God to discern and know truth (e.g., Proverbs 2:2; John 8:32).  For that reason alone, knowledge of God’s Word is even more important.  And, to that end, I am reminded of how important our minds are to God:  Mark 12:30-31 declares that we are to love God with our heart, soul, mind and strength.  The challenge for the believer is what theologians call the noetic effect of sin: 2 Corinthians 4:4 affirms the depths of sin’s effect on our minds.  For that reason, one of the weighty commands of the New Testament is to “renew our minds” (e.g., Romans 12:1-2; Ephesians 4:23).  Colossians 3:2 commands: “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.”  In 2 Corinthians 10:5 Paul speaks of taking “every thought captive to obey Christ.”

As 1 Corinthians 2:6-16 explains, God’s Word is the key to mind renewal. The Holy Spirit, who searches the deep things of God, indwells us and enables us to renew our minds and hearts through God’s Word.  As this process ensues in the believer’s life, Paul declares, we have “the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16). We begin to see and understand things as Christ does. For that reason, believers must exercise the stewardship responsibility of regulating what we let into our minds (see Philippians 4:8). Mind renewal is a stewardship responsibility of the believer and is thereby eternally significant in this world of disinformation, hyperbole, spin and intentional duplicity.

See Maham Javaid. “Australia is banning social media for teens. Others could follow,” in the Washington Post (5 December 2025); Kathleen Parker, “Australia acts to protect children online. Where’s America?” in the Washington Post (12 December 2025);  Carl Trueman in First Things (25 July 2025); Fred Greco in Tabletalk (July 2024), pp. 70-71; James Davison Hunter, Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America’s Political Crisis, pp. 304-308; and Chris Larson in Tabletalk (November 2023), p. 6.