It was when I read a call for families to “bring back landlines” that the penny dropped.

The image of a teenager queueing in the hallway, twirling the cord of a beige phone, waiting for their turn to speak, feels like something out of a museum. Yet, this yearning for a pre-digital age captures perfectly the impulse driving the government’s youth social media ban. Nostalgia. Gen X-ers and Boomers craving a bygone world that digital technology has rendered moot.

The Albanese government’s social media ban for people under the age of 16 begins on December 10.

The world has changed beyond recognition, and older generations don’t grasp how profound that change has been. The eSafety Commissioner, who on Wednesday added Reddit and Kick to the list of sites banned for under-16s from December 10, herself gave the game away with a recent LinkedIn post lamenting that kids these days all want to be YouTubers. She urged them to head back into the band room and the village hall to show off their creative talents, as if those are still the thriving centres of youth expression they once were.

But here’s the thing: there is no going back. There is no world without social media, no........

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