It’s been 20 years since my first social media ban came into effect. At the peak of the MySpace era, when all my friends turned into tiny web developers to HTML-code their profiles and engage in the social politics of the Top 8 best friends table, my high school instituted a blanket ban, blocking every student’s account from accessing the website during our weekly computer classes. (Because, in 2005, “the internet” was still a place we deliberately went to, not something we carried in our palms.)

But they missed something in the purge. One year 9 student realised his login miraculously still let him access the website. So each day, he’d change his password and sell it to students on their way into the musty, hot computer lab for $5 a pop. This enterprising 14-year-old had been given a backdoor through the rule and we all knocked on it. Teenagers will always find a loophole.

Credit: Robin Cowcher

In light of the government’s social media ban coming into effect, I’ve been thinking less about whether teens should skirt the restrictions and find ways back to their apps, and more about the kind of internet they’ll encounter when they do.

I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that social media has become a more hateful and........

© The Sydney Morning Herald