Should social media be banned for over-16s too!? The 2026 Beaker Street Festival Great Debate

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Rae Johnston** (0:08)
Remember that Black Mirror episode where you're scored on what kind of citizen you are? For renters, that already exists.
Real estate platforms are now collecting up to 50 points of data on anyone who wants to rent a home. I'm Rae Johnston, and on Download This Show, I'm investigating what rental tech is doing to your chances of finding somewhere to live. To hear the series, search Download This Show on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.

**Natasha Mitchell** (0:38)
Australia was the first country in the world to ban under-16s from having social media accounts. France just struck down an attempt to do the same. But if your babies weren't born to doom scroll, why do we think adults were? Get ready for our annual Battle of Brains and Bravado today on Big Ideas.
All right, let's get the tape rolling.
From City Hall in Nipuluna Hobart, it's the Beaker Street Festival where science collides with art. My name is Natasha Mitchell. This is Big Ideas. Our house band Stevie and the Bunsen Burners is ready to rock. The crowd is primed on ABC Radio National. Welcome to the 2026 Great Debate.

**Barbara Holland** (1:36)
Well, there's a heckler.

**Natasha Mitchell** (1:37)
Excellent. Tonight, our two teams are debating the proposition that... Social media should be banned for the over-16s too.
We're going to have fun tonight. Let's meet our two teams. Without further ado, team Affirmative arguing for the proposition, The Viral Influenzas.
Team captain is the returning debate champion and sex historian, Dr. Esmé Louise James. She is the creator of Kinky History. It's a book. It's a viral TikTok phenomenon. Her raunchy first novel, Becoming Venus, is out on September the 1st. And with her mathematician mother, she co-hosts the new Sextistics YouTube series. Why did the federal government give you a grant to wave dildos at a camera?

**Esmé Louise James** (2:52)
How is it not in the public interest? Who doesn't want to know about dildos, please?
Dildos are 28,000 years old. That is older than writing and older than the invention of the wheel. And yet we teach other aspects of humanity throughout the ages. Why not sex as well in the history of how we relate to it?

**Natasha Mitchell** (3:13)
On The Viral Influenzas, we have Saul Eslake. He has been chief economist at the big end of town with some of the world's big banks. He calls Hobart Home and now runs his own consultancy. He's a vice chancellor's fellow at the wonderful University of Tasmania. He advises Australia's parliamentary office, serves on the Council of Ageing. Excellent. Plus lots of other roles. He's a regular expert chatterbox in the media. Welcome, Saul. It's great to have you on board.
So, chief economist with some of the world's big banks.
So it's your fault then.

**Saul Eslake** (3:49)
Guilty as charged.

**Natasha Mitchell** (3:52)
What is that like though?

**Saul Eslake** (3:54)
Being economist with a big bank?

**Barbara Holland** (3:56)
Yeah. Well.

**Natasha Mitchell** (3:57)
The Merrill Lynch's of the world.

**Saul Eslake** (3:59)
You know, you get to be the only reason why that institution is mentioned in the media for reasons other than closing branches, sacking staff, making outrageous profits or paying the chief executive too much.

**Natasha Mitchell** (4:14)
We also have Dr. Meredith Castles with us, science communicator, lecturer in human computer interaction at the University of Tasmania's School of Information and Communication Technology. She is interested in ethical, accessible, inclusive, human-centred technology. Yes. How to design it to be nice, not nasty.
Can technology ever be immoral?

**Meredith Castles** (4:35)
Immoral, yes.

**Natasha Mitchell** (4:36)
Is it the technology or the human making it?

**Meredith Castles** (4:38)
Oh, definitely the human. You can never trust them.

**Natasha Mitchell** (4:43)
Okay. Let's meet our second team, arguing against the proposition, Go Wild for the Yappers.
Street Die Hard, local crowd favourite, Professor Barbara Holland. She is a mathematician in the School of Natural Sciences at the University of Tasmania. She fell in love with the power of statistics, works with biologists, uses stats to unravel the great big biological puzzle that is evolution of life on earth. How would you describe why statistics is sexy?

**Barbara Holland** (5:52)
I would say that I've just recently today learned that there's a new profession called a sextician as opposed to a statistician, and I would really encourage them to lean into that, you know, because maybe AI will be doing those less hands-on jobs that require coding, you know. Maybe they should look for something squishier that humans can still excel at.

**Natasha Mitchell** (6:16)
You know her as AstroKirsten on the socials YouTube screens and stages everywhere. She hosted the Dark Sky Dinner last night here at the festival. Dr. Kirsten Banks is an astrophysicist. She's a science communicator, proud camaraderie woman who mixes science with humour, her passion for the cosmos. She's helping us all reach the stars. Great to have you here.