Australia Did It ... Now What?

If you’re under 16 and live in Australia, then you certainly didn’t find this post on social media.

Last Wednesday, Australia’s social media ban came into effect. There has been hundreds and thousands of words scrolled over the past 12 months and I don’t want to litigate this stupid, backward, rushed legislation again. The ban limits accounts for people 16 and under on sites like Instagram, Facebook, X et. al. The ban is bad, the experts were saying it’s bad for more than a year and the experts were ignored for more than a year because a popular science book made someone roll over in bed and demand change.

In the wake of the ban, media outlets have been taking every possible angle they can think of (and thankfully, finally, talking to people that the ban actually affects — ya know, the kids?1) and along the way, video games have [subtly] been under attack.

Take this headline, from the BBC last week:

Online gaming escaped Australia’s social media ban - but critics say it’s just as addictive

…and similarly but slightly better, its social headline:

Australia social media ban: Why isn’t gaming included?

I’ve already written about the world of video game “addiction” reporting — in fact, it was only two months ago that I discussed how Australian outlets cover this specific topic.

And, it seems the fears I had there are already founded, to some degree.

Platforming this contested and controversial area of research and removing all the nuance is dangerous. In that piece back in September, I spoke of two ABC reports that used scientific research to claim more than 100,000 Australian kids were addicted to video games. I wrote:

Both stories follow a familiar template: A young person explains they have been playing a lot of video games, usually with their friends, and they’ve been enjoying it, but there’s a dark side: They play games too much.

In this BBC article we see the same thing again. And we also see the same scientific research, from a not-exactly-rigorous study from Macquarie in 2022 that suggests 2.8% of Australian children have a gaming addiction. The data on this is … well, it just isn’t very rigorous!

So I am surprised to see these figures echoed once again, and again in service of the threat of video game addiction.

There is no doubt that some gaming can become problematic. I remember pissing my pants when I was 5 years old because I simply could not allow my brother a chance to play the Nintendo.2

But video game addictions, their impacts, harms and treatments remains unsettled science — crucial, because there are many “detox” regimes and clinics that already purport to help with gaming addiction. Often, these clinics seem to treat by removing games from their patients and getting them to engage socially with others. Cool! That’s probably just helpful for many people even if they don’t like video games! Few of these clinics seem to have scientifically validated methods, but I’d be happy to hear different!

In Australia, there is a lone publicly-funded addiction clinic. It’s in Perth, at the Fiona Stanley Hospital and run by Dr Daniela Vecchio3. The BBC article starts its story at the clinic, with the characteristic “young person has excessive online gaming habits” and claims this young person was playing online for 10 hours a day with friends.

The article doesn’t dig into which games, or what the patient was doing on them, instead suggesting he “spent much of his time on the gaming platform Steam” as well as YouTube.

This is bizarre framing for an article about addictive video games.

Steam, of course, is a platform. It is a storefront, mostly, with the ability to launch games. I can’t imagine anyone spending 10 hours in there, reviewing games they’ve played rather than actually playing them. That would be like spending 10 hours in an EB Games and just looking at the wall and talking to other customers!

But I digress.

The thing that stands out to me is that Vecchio, in the piece, seems to be pushing for expansion of the social media ban to include gaming and raise the age to 18.

This is bonkers and there is not any data or evidence I have seen that would justify this. But there’s no push back in the article at all.

This is the kind of rhetoric has ramped up in Australia over the last month or so as the social media ban came into focus.

First, there was a Guardian article about a “Chilling week in Roblox” — To be honest, I think this was mostly fair, and served to raise crucial safety points and awareness about the kind of experiences (that’s Roblox’s name for ‘games’) that appear on the platform.4 There are ways to prevent the worst interactions on Roblox for young people, but its a terrible platform, and often unsafe and I think the platform needs to do way more to ensure parents know this, have the tools and can protect their children. So, overall, good job Guardian!

Next, just a couple of weeks ago, a 9News report with a classic GAME OVER title and a overblown YouTube image of a child… with a controller way too close to his face and red eyes aired:

This video also features Vecchio’s gaming addiction clinic. I don’t think it’s any surprise that we have seen such a focus on it, after the ABC first platformed this clinic back in September, and did so — in my opinion — with little regard for the science, little pushback and little clarity around what the clinics can do. It’s no surprise that the same stories are now proliferating.

The scary part about the 9News piece comes right at the end of this video, the journalist provides an even more bonkers kicker: “There are concerns this socials ban could turn more teens to gaming… proving just how important these addiction clinics could be.”

Concerns from who? Who is concerned that this ban will turn kids to gaming? This is a little kooky, Channel 9, and I expect a bit better than hand-wavey panic porn to end your “think of the children” segments.

Which brings me back to the BBC. The article is poorly constructed, jumping around from social media, to games, to ChatGPT voice robots or something and then back to the clinic. But a companion video to the gaming article is more interesting. It fairly raises the point that parents are concerned about why Roblox isn’t included in the social media ban. That’s a reasonable question.

Toward the end of the video, the reporter says the government should be questioned about “why are [these gaming platforms] not being targeted [by the ban] when there are so many parents who feel this legislation was there to give them peace — but there’s plenty of them who are not at peace with games not included.”

Ah, there it is.

This speaks to a major, major issue with the perception of the ban: The legislation has been seen as a tool for parents to just cut off social media use; one black-and-white way to shut down the often difficult conversations around digital literacy, understanding what kids are doing online and who they might be viewing or interacting with and bring them peace. That same tool, some seem to hope, could be used with video games — and particularly with games that are causing great consternation in their household. I know, anecdotally, it causes great issues in households! This is the Peace Legislation!! Just add games in there to make parenting easier!

Is this not the thrust of much of the debate: It’s very hard to parent! And any help, given the state of, uh, everything, seems very welcome. This legislative bandaid soothes a sore spot, but it doesn’t get close to actually solving the issues children will encounter online. And in these pieces, video games are now being caught up, because those too are difficult to understand and control.

You may be thinking Jack, why the f******** do you care? Why does any of this matter?

Well, the final line in the BBC piece5 suggests there’s a big problem here.

“The demand for platforms to do better is growing. So too are the queues of families waiting to get help at the gaming disorder clinic, but Vecchio has to turn them away.”

And this is what gets me.

This may be a cute turn of phrase but if this is the idea that is being pushed into public view, this is dangerous. Even if there are waitlists for this service, there are waitlists for many mental health and clinic services across the country. This piece paints the gaming addiction clinic as overwhelmed and leaving parents to fend for themselves — the exact type of rhetoric that leads to public perception that a ban is the way to protect children.

If you can’t get into the clinic, isn’t the next best thing just to ban games altogether? They must be doing extreme harm!

What worries me is that fundamental principle of the ban — protecting children from bullying, algorithms, harmful shit — is already ignored for reactive, populist coverage on what’s next. This takes away valuable space and time for journalists to discuss some of the (shock horror) major issues in a range of video games, particularly games like Roblox, which bombard kids with pop ups to spend real money.

Their gamblified systems attempt to wrest cash from their tiny pockets and age-inappropriate content is incorrectly labelled. We could be talking about regulating that space. In fact, we could be making a real difference by regulating that space. But instead, we opt for the easy, overblown narratives of “addiction”, backed by very weak science and continue to ignore a much larger and potentially even more harmful problem.

But then, it’s not like the major lobbying group or huge news publishers behind the push for a social media ban had any ties to gambling though…

…right?

Right????

See you next week, with some more research integrity gear ;)

A couple of scribbles

• Big shout to upcoming game “Australia Did It” for the title. I also used its game art at the top. I don’t know what Australia did, exactly, but in this video game you have to traverse some sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland. I presume this was caused by the social media ban.

• This newsletter’s little Autism Bicycle story went off. Thanks for sharing and subscribing and being interested in research integrity (and science reporting integrity!)

• I have some follow ups from Scientific Reports on the Autism Bike for those interested:

  • The study got retracted. We could chalk this up to nobreakthroughs. first retraction (!!!) but the major AI figure errors were first noticed by some clever sleuths, so we’re not quite taking the win here. Good job to the anons who flagged the massive issues on PubPeer.

  • The second thing is, I’ve continued to dig into this with Scientific Reports EIC, Rafal Marszalek. I wanted to know why this got retracted so fast. Here’s Marszalek: “Due to the significant issues that were identified when we assessed the article, this followed a rapid retraction pathway where the author was notified of the retraction, including the retraction notice, and asked if they agreed or disagreed, rather than being asked for an explanation before a retraction decision was reached. They confirmed that they agreed with the retraction (as stated in the retraction notice).” A rapid retraction pathway you say? I haven’t been able to find out what that means.

  • Lastly, I asked Scientific Reports about the high number of retractions in 2025 (88 and counting, its highest in a year). Marszalek said: “Scientific Reports has an accept rate of approximately 33%, indicating the rigorous assessment of submissions to the journal. Our in-house editors (almost 150 editors and assistant editors) are committed to ensuring the integrity of the journal and are often supported in their work by Springer Nature’s research integrity team. We work hard to ensure that we actively address all concerns that are raised - the number of retractions reflects this commitment.”

  I will leave it to readers to decide how to take that. I will say that the rapid retraction does deserve praise, but the fact it made it into the journal at all deserves a little more scrutiny.
  
  If this moved the needle for you, please share it and please subscribe! I am a freelancer, I take no money for this right now, but there’s plenty of research integrity issues to go around and maybe I can make a red hot go of it in 2026.