When I was elected as Member for Mallee in 2019 I never imagined that 5 years later we would be fighting to save children’s childhoods. As a mother and grandmother, I see how pervasive devices and electronic entertainment have become in children’s lives.

I was out for one of my daughter’s birthdays recently and saw a woman with her young children and her mother, with both children’s eyes glued to two large iPads. Just two metres away other children played on a large indoor playground.

We cannot simply stand by and watch our children’s childhoods be stolen. Imaginative play, physical activity and fitness are slipping away. Children are coping with boredom by using a digital device.  We in the older generation must take responsibility for what our own device behaviour models around our children, and give children the love, time and attention they crave and deserve.

In Canberra we are debating the influence of tech giants in Australians’ lives and the impact that negativity on social media is having, particularly, on children.  The cyber-bullying, body image messaging and lurid pictures are bad enough let alone the psychological disorders that the tech platforms fail to address – or even promote through their algorithms.

For centuries in Australia our children’s values have been formed by mum, dad, grandparents, the extended family and community.  Now, in the parenting hierarchy, socialist governments want to control what people believe and think and are positioning at the top of that ladder and – whether we intended it or not – tech giants like Meta (Facebook, Instagram), Google (Youtube) and Apple are fast pushing family and community values into oblivion.

If government and tech giants are the new gatekeepers of values, we have a volatile and destructive mix.

I want to focus, as I did as a member of the Parliamentary committee I was on in 2019-20, on ‘Protecting the Age of Innocence’, the title of our February 2020 report.  We recommended then age verification for online wagering and online pornography.  As the tech giants design their apps and devices to be addictive, the age verification debate has broadened to social media.  The Coalition has committed that within 100 days of taking office we will require an age limit of 16 for social media and other potentially harmful platforms.

The Coalition tried to legislate for an age verification trial in November but the Albanese Government opposed it – and are still months away from any real action.

I invite and welcome readers’ thoughts on this important topic by emailing anne.webster.mp@aph.gov.au