Eoin Whelan

And we have legislation which the Digital Services Act for that data, social media companies are supposed to provide that data to better researchers.

Now, I haven't tried to get access to it myself, but I've talked to colleagues who have, and they found that it's extremely difficult and cumbersome to actually get access to that data.

And when they do get it, it's incomplete.

So we do have legislation there to help us understand more about the impacts of social media.

It's about enforcing that legislation and making it work.

Well, there are legitimate concerns there.

I'm a parent myself of teenagers, so there are concerns, and I understand that policymakers are under pressure here to do something.

We can learn a lot from the experience of Australia.

Obviously, they went first with the social media ban.

We could have a whole show talking about the issues around that.

But one of the things that I'd be concerned about and maybe they didn't think about in Australia was

you know, what we call compensatory behaviors.

If teenagers are spending two or three hours a day on social media and we suddenly take that away from them, well, what are they going to do with that time now?

Are we suddenly going to think that teenage girls are going to start participating in sports?

You know, we need to have a plan there.

And there's some evidence coming out of Australia that when social media is taken away from them, well, they just end up looking at TV and playing video games, which kind of defeats the whole purpose.

So we need to have a plan if I'm not against restricting certain features of social media or even restricting the amount of time adolescents are on it.

There can be potential benefits to that, but we need to have a plan in place and think about what the unintended consequences of that might be.

Absolutely.

They have an important role to play in any regulation and policy about this.