On Wednesday, December 10, Australian kids are waking up to a world that was once inconceivable: They don’t have social media anymore . The country is the first to prohibit social apps for children under age 16. The ban on 10 platforms includes TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, Facebook, X and Reddit.

If parents outside of Australia adopt the same rules, our kids will thank us later.

That’s because social media appears to be making our kids less healthy and happy. I recently joined leading researchers around the globe in writing a consensus statement about what we know social media and smartphones are doing to kids. We overwhelmingly agreed that the literature shows that, over the past 20 years as they became ubiquitous, adolescent mental health declined.

What’s more, phones and

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