A big reason they are pushing this is Cyberbullying....yet a recent death in the news this week, the kid was literally bullied/sextorted via SMS....not social media.
Without banning SMS and possibly calls as well, it debunks this argument
Just ban Australia themselves.
> A big reason they are pushing this is Cyberbullying
Oh really now? It has been going on for so many years... A big reason they've been pushing this is it impacts their own pockets i.e. the traditional media companies.
Pretty sure the internet was a thing well before kids got dumb phones.
The internet has evolved meaningfully over the last 10 years, even. Evolved might be generous, though.
Juxtapose that with today, where any one bully can create dozens of accounts to bully in a swarm, and the bully has constant access to you from your own pocket. Also, a person in Minsk or Timbuktu or whatever couldn't just come up to your house in the middle of the night to harass you out of boredom.
This "we could do X before computers, why are we trying to ban X-with-computers now?" line of arguments is just intellectually lazy. If a bad behavior was well moderated in the past because it was labor or resource intensive, the sudden removal of those constraints is a material change that demands revisiting. Put another way, if a constraint stops working, we should change constraints, not just do the old constraint with a confused expression on our faces.
Kids know how to download or use free texting apps and sites, giving them access to potentially thousands of different numbers from which they can engage in harassment campaigns. In fact, it's an incredibly common tactic.
Similarly, someone from Minsk and Timbuktu can do the same thing, they have access to the same tools.
I seem to remember real bullies would do it to your face before the internet. Not just anyone behind a keyboard.
Adults are however also better equipped to deal with that, especially if they have not been subjected to such abuse as children. It is worth noting that online bullying is however not the most serious matter here, rather (in my mind at least) it is the systematic targeting of kids/teenagers to get inside their head and get them to perform violent acts against themselves or others around them.
It could happen that they ban all communications, but if you think so, it needs its own argument; it can't hang off the social media ban. Otherwise it is like saying that if they ban children from drinking beer, soon they'll ban them from drinking liquids.
Following your reasoning:
Alcohol is banned for children. How long until they ban all drinks?
Driving is banned for children. How long until they ban all self-directed transport?
Voting is banned for children. How long until they pan all political opinion?
No. Just no.