PARTISAN!

Eliza M., Brisbane

The federal government is planning to implement a law on limiting young people’s access to the internet by the end of the year. The policy would ban young people from accessing social media and pornography with stringent age verification. The age limit is under discussion but Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton both favour 16.

Is social media in its current form harmful for young people? Unequivocally yes, especially for young women. Instagram has been proven to promote poor body image through bombarding users with images and videos of models and influencers representing an unrealistic beauty standard. As feminists we must tirelessly oppose this tendency which results in misery, oppression and a high frequency of eating disorders. We must be realistic in that mainstream pornography represents a fundamentally violent and misogynistic presentation of heterosexual sex, especially when involving transexual women and women of colour. Mainstream porn acts as a form of sexual miseducation for young people normalising violent and sexist behaviour by young men and passivity by young women. Online spaces are also used by child abusers causing immense harm to young people. We must also consider the decline in attention spans of young Marxists that has been facilitated by social media and general poorer mental health. This impacts the ability of young people to read books, engage deeply in theory and maintain a consistent pattern of political activity.

Is the ban on young people accessing large parts of the internet progressive? As feminists, we understand the primary patriarchal structure is the family. Young people lack power and autonomy leads to them often being subjected to physical, sexual and coercive violence by parents, older siblings and other relatives. Taking away the autonomy of young people to use the internet to gain information and connect with others places power in the hands of the patriarchs and their ability to monopolise information. Young people can currently use social media to talk among their peers and engage in feminist discussions to raise their consciousness around these issues. The family dynamics form gendered expectations in young people cementing past backwardness into the future – the ability of young people to engage in social relations not policed by these same adults is a vital learning experience. Young women from religiously conservative families are especially dependent on social media if they wish to break away and avoid early marriage and motherhood. Queer young people, especially transsexual youth, are further oppressed and controlled by their parents. The suicide rate of young queer people is sobering proof of this. Online queer communities are often a lifeline providing helpful educational resources, social support and assistance in transitioning.

As Communists, we should engage in how damaging social media and online pornography can be to young people. A ban on social media however is a reactionary means of further empowering older family members to wield patriarchal power over young people. Communists should both defend the rights and autonomy of young people while finding progressive ways of challenging harms caused online.