Parents worry about it. Psychologists warn about it. Politicians promise to do something about it. And increasingly the villain has a name — the algorithm.
The concern is not imaginary. Heavy and problematic social-media use has been associated with depression and anxiety, particularly among adolescent girls. Cyberbullying, social comparison, harmful content and disrupted sleep can all cause problems.
But the evidence also suggests something rather less dramatic: how social media is used matters enormously. Time limits, keeping phones out of bedrooms at night, parental supervision and simply talking to children about what they encounter online can reduce the risks.
Which raises an uncomfortable question.
When did a difficult parenting problem become a government responsibility?
Every generation of parents has faced influences it couldn't completely control — television, pornography, alcohol, drugs, unsuitable friends and the irresistible attraction of doing whatever your parents told you not to do.
Social media has made the job harder. But parents still decide when younger children get smartphones. They can impose time limits, monitor accounts, keep phones out of bedrooms and intervene when something looks wrong.
None of that guarantees success.
Parenting never has.
Yet increasingly the response seems to be:
If parents cannot completely control something, government should.
Australia has already prohibited children under 16 from holding accounts on designated social-media platforms. Britain has strengthened online-safety and age-assurance requirements. European governments are considering further restrictions.
The justification is compelling.
We are protecting the children.
But what exactly are we authorising government to do?
Governments are moving beyond restricting children's access. Increasingly they want to regulate the algorithms deciding what appears on our screens.
Australia's proposed “My Feed, My Way” reforms would require platforms to give users greater control over whether their feeds contain algorithmically recommended material.
Giving users more choice sounds attractive.
But it also establishes an important principle:
Government can regulate the mechanism deciding what information appears before us.
Today the concern is obvious harmful content directed at children.
Tomorrow it might be misinformation.
Then extremist material.
Then hate speech.
Then political propaganda.
Each step can be justified as preventing harm.
I am not suggesting governments introducing child-safety laws secretly intend to censor political debate. The danger is simpler than that.
Once society accepts a government power for one legitimate purpose, extending that power becomes much easier.
The question therefore isn't whether children should be protected.
Of course they should.
It is where that authority stops.
There is another uncomfortable consequence.
To stop children using social media, platforms first have to determine who the children are.
That can involve analysing photographs, facial-age estimates, account behaviour, devices and other personal information.
So we arrive at a strange outcome:
To protect children from technology knowing too much about them, we may require technology to know considerably more about them.
Perhaps that trade-off is worthwhile.
But we should at least acknowledge it.
There is a simpler way of looking at the problem.
Social-media companies have responsibilities. They should not knowingly drive vulnerable children toward increasingly harmful material simply because engagement produces revenue.
Parents have responsibilities. Governments cannot replace knowing what your 13-year-old is doing at midnight with a smartphone behind a closed bedroom door.
Government has responsibilities too — particularly where platforms facilitate illegal activity or knowingly expose children to demonstrable dangers.
But these are three different responsibilities.
We should be wary of allowing the third gradually to absorb the first two.
Social media can harm children. That is a legitimate reason for parents to take greater control and for platforms to behave responsibly.
It does not automatically follow that government should decide what information algorithms may place before us.
Protecting children is important.
So is protecting the freedom of adults to decide what they read, watch and believe.
The challenge is ensuring that in pursuing the first, we don't quietly surrender the second.
Because after we turn off the algorithm, one question remains:
Who gets to decide what replaces it?
Australia’s migration debate has become trapped between two extremes.
On one side, any attempt to question migration levels is too readily dismissed as hostility towards migrants. On the other, some propose dramatic cuts without adequately considering the workers Australia genuinely needs.
There ought to be room for a more practical question:
How many migrants can Australia absorb without making Australians poorer or placing intolerable pressure on housing and infrastructure?
That question has become unavoidable.
The Albanese Government has now announced another migration overhaul. It proposes tighter rules for international students, restrictions on visa hopping, limits on extended working-holiday visas and stronger action against overstayers. The Government says these measures will help reduce net overseas migration from about 300,000 towards 225,000 by 2027–28. Reuters
There are some sensible measures in the package. Australia should not allow temporary visas to become an indefinite chain of course changes, extensions and appeals. Nor should people whose visas have expired simply disappear into the community.
But the central problem remains unanswered.
Why is 225,000 the right number?
It appears to be a forecast the Government hopes to reach, rather than a figure derived from Australia’s housing capacity, infrastructure constraints or effect on living standards.
High migration produces economic growth almost automatically. More people mean more workers, more consumers, more taxpayers and more government revenue.
That makes the headline GDP figure look respectable.
But increasing the size of the economy is not the same as increasing the prosperity of the people already living in it. If GDP rises by 2 per cent while the population rises by 2.5 per cent, the economy has grown but the average Australian’s share has shrunk.
For a government unwilling to reduce expenditure, rapid population growth is politically convenient. It expands the tax base and helps keep the economy out of a technical recession.
Unfortunately, Australians do not live in “aggregate GDP”. They live on household incomes. They pay rent or mortgages, wait in traffic, seek hospital appointments and compete for increasingly scarce housing.
The relevant question is not whether migration makes Australia’s economy larger. Of course it does.
The question is whether it makes Australians better off.
In recent years, the answer has been far less reassuring. Population growth has helped sustain headline economic growth while per-person living standards have been squeezed. The economic pie grew, but the number of people sharing it grew rapidly as well.
Every additional person needs somewhere to live.
That statement is so obvious that it should not need repeating. Yet migration policy has often been conducted as though housing supply will automatically adjust to whatever population number Canberra chooses.
It does not.
New homes require land releases, approvals, finance, builders, tradespeople, materials, roads, water, electricity and other services. All take time. Some are already in short supply.
Migrants themselves are not to blame for this. They come under rules established by the Australian Government. The failure lies in admitting people much faster than the country can provide the homes and services they require.
When population growth exceeds housing construction, the result is predictable:
rents rise;
vacancy rates fall;
more people compete for each available property;
first-home buyers find the market even harder to enter; and
governments fall further behind in providing schools, hospitals, transport and utilities.
The Government frequently responds that migrants are needed to build the houses. There is some truth in that—but only if migration is carefully targeted towards the actual shortages.
Bringing in construction workers may help increase supply. Bringing in many more people who also need homes, without adding comparable construction capacity, makes the shortage worse.
The composition of migration therefore matters as much as the total.
Australia needs migration.
We have an ageing population, a low birth rate and genuine shortages in medicine, nursing, aged care, construction, engineering and other specialised fields. A sensible migration program can fill skills that cannot readily be supplied locally and prevent population decline from becoming economically disruptive.
But migration is a policy instrument, not a national objective in its own right.
The program should be large enough to:
fill clearly demonstrated skills shortages;
replace essential workers lost through retirement;
support a sustainable demographic balance; and
attract people whose skills will add to Australia’s productive capacity.
It should not be used merely to inflate GDP, support an ever-expanding bureaucracy or conceal weak productivity growth.
Nor should businesses be able to rely indefinitely on imported labour instead of training Australians, improving productivity or offering wages sufficient to attract local workers.
Even if Australia eventually decides that a net migration figure around 200,000 is sustainable, it does not follow that this is the correct number today.
Migration has exceeded Australia’s capacity for several years. We are not beginning with a balanced housing market and adequate infrastructure. We are beginning with an accumulated shortage.
That means the appropriate short-term migration figure may need to be significantly lower than the desirable long-term figure.
Think of it as a household that has been spending beyond its income. Merely reducing expenditure to equal income does not repay the debt already accumulated. A temporary surplus is needed to catch up.
Housing requires the same logic.
For a period, Australia must build substantially more homes than are required by population growth. Only then can vacancy rates recover, rents stabilise and the accumulated shortage begin to fall.
Once that repair has occurred, migration could rise to a sustainable long-term level—provided housing and infrastructure are keeping pace.
The Government’s proposed figure of 225,000 may prove too high, too low or approximately right. But it should not be accepted simply because it appears in a government forecast.
A credible migration policy should begin with measurable constraints:
How many homes is Australia short today?
How many new homes can realistically be completed each year?
How many homes are required for natural population growth?
How much migration can be accommodated while still reducing the housing deficit?
Which skilled migrants would increase Australia’s productive capacity rather than merely add to demand?
Social cohesion and the importing of overseas hatreds are also serious concerns. The increasingly visible demonstrations in Australian cities have understandably sharpened public unease. But that is a separate discussion involving not simply the number of migrants, but whom Australia selects and what it expects of those who settle here.
For now, the numerical principle should be straightforward:
Migration should not exceed Australia’s capacity to house its population, provide essential infrastructure and improve—not dilute—living standards.
The Government has announced another set of migration adjustments. What it has not provided is a convincing calculation showing why its preferred figure is sustainable.
In the next post, we will attempt that calculation. We will examine Australia’s existing housing shortage, the number of homes we can realistically build, the housing required for natural population growth and the skilled migration Australia genuinely needs. From those numbers, we should be able to estimate a temporary migration ceiling that allows the housing shortage to shrink rather than continue growing.
That is the calculation we will be presenting in the next post in this series.
Has Multiculturalism Lost Its Way? — The difference between welcoming migrants and abandoning the expectation that newcomers integrate into Australian society.
Tony Abbott’s Warning on Multiculturalism — Why mass migration without integration can weaken social cohesion and shared democratic values.
Never Again Starts Here — The case for confronting antisemitism and the deterioration of social cohesion in Australia.
The first two are the closest fit. The third supports the brief reference to imported hatreds and the highly visible deterioration in social cohesion.
They should pay the artists whose work helps train their models.
That should be the starting point of Australia’s AI copyright debate.
The ABC has reported government proposals that would allow AI training on online copyright material unless its owners opted out, subject to licensing or payment conditions. These remain proposals, not law. But the principle deserves challenging: why should creators have to take action to prevent commercial use of their work? [ABC News](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-15/ai-companies-train-on-creator-work-documents-reveal/107154688)
Surely the company seeking access should secure agreement first.
Writers, musicians, photographers and illustrators have spent years developing their skills. Their work is an asset, often their livelihood. They have every reason to resist handing over its commercial value without acceptable terms.
Especially when the resulting AI may compete for their next commission.
I have explored AI’s creative abilities in [Can AI Write From The Heart?](https://www.grappyssoapbox.com/2026/08/?m=0) That link opens the August archive containing the post. The technology is impressive. For someone earning a living through creativity, it is also a formidable potential competitor.
Being asked to help train that competitor deserves more than a promise of benefits to humanity.
Those benefits may be enormous. In [The AI Race Will Be Won With Energy](https://www.grappyssoapbox.com/2026/09/the-ai-race-will-be-won-with-energy.html), I argued that we should take AI’s transformative potential seriously.
But commercial AI developers also seek commercial returns. There is nothing wrong with that. There is something wrong with treating public benefit as a reason somebody else should supply the ingredients free.
Perhaps part of the impasse is timing.
Creators want compensation for work supplied now. Developers may prefer to pay after their investment produces a return. The eventual value is uncertain, and dividing it among millions of contributors will be difficult.
But delayed payment and no agreed entitlement to payment are very different things.
If artists are expected to wait, the terms should be settled before their work is used. Otherwise, they are being asked to finance somebody else’s business without the protections an investor would demand.
Royalties, collective licences, upfront payments or a combination might provide an answer. I do not claim to know which arrangement will work best. The method can evolve.
The obligation to compensate should not disappear while everyone debates the method.
Government has a useful role here. Bring the parties together. Help smaller creators negotiate collectively. Support transparent agreements and accessible enforcement.
But government should not change copyright law to give AI companies access to protected creative work without the rights holders’ agreement to the terms.
In negotiating those terms, government should mediate. It should not substitute its consent for the creator’s.
The attraction of investment, data centres and technological prestige does not give ministers the right to bargain away somebody else’s work.
Artists must be compensated. AI companies must foot the bill. The parties can negotiate how and when.
Government’s job is to help them reach an agreement—not make agreement unnecessary.
Bill Maher is one of those commentators I don't always agree with, which is precisely why I find him worth listening to.
He remains broadly liberal, but he has an admirable habit of challenging his own side when he thinks it has lost its way. His latest New Rule, “Clash of Civilizations”, is a particularly good example.
Marking the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Maher asks how much Western attitudes have changed since that terrible day.
His argument is worth ten minutes of your time.
Maher begins with 9/11 and a surprisingly contemporary question: why have parts of the media become reluctant even to use the word terrorist?
Twenty-five years ago, there was little ambiguity about what had happened. Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked civilian aircraft and deliberately murdered almost 3,000 people.
Maher's point is not that there is a clash between Muslims and Christians. He explicitly rejects that idea.
The clash, he argues, is between radical Islamism and Western liberalism.
On one side are values such as freedom of religion, equality for women, tolerance of homosexuality and freedom of expression. On the other is an ideology that rejects many of those principles.
What troubles Maher is that sections of the Western Left now seem reluctant to defend their own liberal values against people who openly oppose them.
That is an uncomfortable observation.
It is also difficult to dismiss.
The second half of the segment is, to my mind, even more important.
Maher turns to Israel's war against Hamas and attacks the increasingly casual use of one of the most serious words in our vocabulary:
Genocide.
Maher's position is unequivocal. He argues that describing the Gaza war as genocide is false and points to Israel's conduct — including humanitarian aid and medical evacuations — as evidence inconsistent with an intention to destroy the Palestinian people.
The word genocide should not simply become another political slogan.
It describes one of humanity's most terrible crimes. If we casually attach it to warfare involving tragic civilian casualties, we risk stripping the word of its meaning.
More importantly, accusations have consequences.
This is where Maher makes perhaps his sharpest observation.
If people are repeatedly told that Israel is deliberately committing genocide against Palestinians — and come to believe that as an established fact — then hostility towards Israel becomes not merely understandable but morally righteous.
And from there, the line between hatred of Israel and hatred of Jews can become dangerously thin.
Maher argues that this helps explain the extraordinary rise in antisemitism throughout the Western world since October 7.
That does not mean every critic of Israel is antisemitic. Nor does criticism of Israeli government policy become antisemitism merely because it is strongly expressed.
But accusing the Jewish state of deliberately exterminating a people has become a political tool to demonise Israel and indirectly all Jews.
“Genocide” has become a chant on streets, university campuses and social media — often presented not as an allegation to be proved, but as an established fact.
We have seen the consequences.
As I discussed recently in Never Again Starts Here, antisemitism has grown to the point where Australia has established a Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion. Jewish Australians have found themselves facing intimidation and hostility over the actions of a foreign government. grappyssoapbox.com
That should concern everyone, whatever their view of the Gaza war.
Maher's presentation is short, funny in places, provocative and characteristically blunt.
You may not agree with every argument he makes. I don't think that matters.
His larger questions are worth considering.
Have we become so uncomfortable calling terrorism by its name that we obscure what it represents?
Have sections of the Western Left forgotten the liberal values they once defended?
And have we allowed one of the most terrible words in human history — genocide — to become so casually politicised that an allegation is now routinely treated as a proven fact?
Maher has his answers.
Watch the video below and make up your own mind.
Never Again Starts Here — Why Australia's Royal Commission into Antisemitism matters and what Australia might learn from other Western democracies. grappyssoapbox.com
Israel IS Following Rules of War — An earlier examination of Israel's conduct in Gaza and the laws governing warfare. This links to the November 2023 archive containing the article. grappyssoapbox.com
Kisin Responds to Criticism of His Israel Video — Konstantin Kisin's response to criticism of his arguments supporting Israel after October 7. grappyssoapbox.com
