March 16, 1997.

Sunday night.

The TV screen has a 4:3 ratio, the antennae are angled just so with balls of aluminium at their tips. I turn the dial to change the channel from 5 to 8.

tchunk tchunk tchunk

I twist the power/volume knob anti-clockwise before pulling on it to make sure the sound of the TV commercials don’t deafen me.

A dot of light appears on the centre of the screen before quickly expanding. You can hear the static. Screens used to be fuzzy.

The Emerson digital clock on my shelf switches from 07:59 PM to 08:00 PM.

The Simpsons is on. Tonight is season 8, episode 18, and missing an episode means disaster. Waiting until hiatus or weekday reruns to see a missed episode was awful.

If you watch The Simpsons today, you may not understand why it was such a big deal, and I didn’t either back then. But, what I did know was that every episode was filled with blink-or-you’ll-miss-it gags, occasionally three or four per minute. Those 30 minutes (22 minutes with two commercial breaks) were the last laugh to punctuate the weekend before school started the next morning (a slightly newer show was on just after, King of the Hill, I liked it, but I hadn’t yet grasped the genius of Mike Judge, and South Park was still a few months away from debuting).

The overall gag of the episode is a parody of prohibition crime dramas. Good laughs were had, but I wouldn’t bet any money on me remembering most of the episode. Except for one thing, that is. Because this is the episode that birthed a meme. This is the episode where Helen Lovejoy (the judgemental town gossip) first used her catchphrase, “Ohhh, won’t somebody PLEASE think of the children!?”

This gag was so over my head that it took until adulthood for me to get the social commentary.

Id est, Helen Lovejoy is not a nice person. Being a judgemental town gossip is one thing, but Helen is a heartless drama queen, an obnoxious proto-Karen, always waiting to kick the cat. She does not care about the children one bit. If Helen Lovejoy were to post a question on /r/AmItheAsshole, “YTA” would be the most common reply.

Today, as part of my work I had to prepare an exercise about an article (pretty common stuff for an ESL professor). The article, Denmark set to limit social media for children under 15 (WAtoday), doesn’t bury the lede,

“Denmark will ban social media for anyone aged under 15 after a political deal to endorse new laws follows a similar crackdown in Australia, signalling the momentum for tougher measures across Europe.”

And it ends with a banger:

“France will be one of the next countries to debate stronger laws after a parliamentary committee declared in September that there should be a “digital curfew” for teenagers to keep them off social media at night.”

At first glance, I might read this article and think this is a great idea, especially the first part about keeping under-15s off of social media. After all, it is for the children. Then I remembered Helen Lovejoy and the almost weekly reports of people in positions of power being arrested for hurting the children they claimed they were protecting from predators (e.g. this nasty POS opposed LGBTQ+ rights because of “family values”).

We all know that social media is linked to a slew of issues, so our trigger response to laws like this might be a sigh of relief, a like, and a share on social. Let’s holster that idea, take a step back, and, as Tim says to Helen in the fantastic “El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer,” (season 8, episode 9) call off our dogs.

The JMIR Mental Health is the official journal of the Society of Digital Psychiatry, “an international hub for professionals who are interested in Digital Psychiatry.” The journal published an article titled Social Media Use in Adolescents: Bans, Benefits, and Emotion Regulation Behaviors1 in November 2024. In it, the authors (NB, employees of Fit Minded) look at the efficacy of social media bans.

I’ll spoil it for you:

• “there is a dearth of research examining its potential positive effects [of social media use in adolescents]”
• “social media can provide a safe space for specific adolescent populations, such as those in the LGBTQ+ community”
• “social media bans and severe restrictions that rely on external regulation offer little improvement in addressing [the challenges adolescents face]”
• “social media bans and severe restrictions neglect the positive experiences that promote social connectedness and improve mental well-being among adolescents”

The article highlights the importance of “a safe and anonymous space” for adolescents, the power of peer support, and the need for providing assistance rather than imposing bans.

Banning adolescents from social media to protect them may lead to a more dangerous situation. France wants to ban social media for those under 15 and impose curfews for 15- to 18-year-olds. Some adolescents don’t want to talk about their problems with adults, especially parents. They are afraid they’ll get in trouble even though they may be the victims. Adolescents are sometimes irrational, it is a fact of life.

My rational side thinks about it like this:

1. Laws want to prevent adolescents from accessing social media.
2. They won’t have access to anonymous spaces because of A.
3. They can be threatened and bullied into being silent.
4. Because of A, B, and C, they are ideal victims (especially if the call is coming from inside the house).

e.g. A person who wants to [steal candy from] an adolescent will now be able to [steal] with more confidence. The victim can be told to keep silent. The [candy thief] can say, “if you tell anyone I [stole your candy] I’ll say you are lying or that you [gave me your candy].” The [thief] will sleep soundly knowing that the victim cannot even use social media to talk to their friends or ask for help in anonymous spaces.

In no way am I implying that the lawmakers want to enable crimes like this. If I can see an issue with banning social media, they can see it. In fact, they did. If we rewind back to November 2024 when the bill was proposed, some cherry-picked reactions were:

“This is a rubbish Bill[.] It’s also obvious that the people who have drafted and fought for the particular elements of this Bill actually have no idea how young people engage with the internet. This is boomers trying to tell young people how the internet should work.”

—Sarah Hanson-Young, Australian Greens

“Given the potential for these laws to significantly interfere with the rights of children and young people, the Commission has serious reservations about the proposed social media ban.”

—Australian Human Rights Commission

Boomers interfering with the rights of children? Helen! Are you there, Helen? No?

This is the part where a professional writer or journalist might propose a solution. I am neither, but it seems to me that the ideas put forward in the article mentioned above are a good starting point. Doing more research, exploring alternatives to banning, and acknowledging the positive aspects of social media are much better than having a town hall, clutching pearls, and using the “for the children” argument.

Governments should be holding social media platforms accountable. However, laws like this open the door to other dangers, and give those same platforms the right to ask for proof of age and identity. The proposal is about as earnest as Helen Lovejoy.

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McAlister, K. L., Beatty, C. C., Smith-Caswell, J. E., Yourell, J. L., & Huberty, J. L. (2024). Social Media Use in Adolescents: Bans, Benefits, and Emotion Regulation Behaviors. JMIR mental health, 11, e64626. https://doi.org/10.2196/64626 ↩