Don’t leave Hong Kong parents to their own devices on child social media use

Hong Kong, a city of overachievers, especially when it comes to the young, is also filled with children who take to social media early. Almost 35 per cent of kindergarten pupils log at least one hour of recreational screen time daily. By the junior forms, 60 per cent exceed the international two-hour daily limit.The time children spend on screens creates friction at home, accounting for 85.5 per cent of family disputes. Governments must look into whether they are adequately protecting children from screen time addiction – the bread and butter of social media platforms – or if parents are being left to their own devices.A little over a week after the Hong Kong Institute of Family Education released findings that reaffirmed what most of us already know, Meta announced that it has started sending alerts to parents if it is found that their children have been repeatedly searching for content about suicide and self-harm on Instagram.I have my doubts that this is because Meta cares about our children.Last December, Australia became the first country to ban social media for children under 16. Youth are more susceptible to the systemic features that make social media harmful, such as algorithms designed to feed viewers content likely to hook them and the lack of safeguards against inappropriate content.While a ban by one country will hardly rein in social media’s damaging effect on young people, it is a way to hold social media platforms accountable for their reckless pursuit of profit at the expense of our children’s mental health.Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (left) talks to schoolchildren and the Premier of South Australia Peter Malinauskas (right), as he cooks sausages on a barbecue during an official function to mark the start of Australia’s social media reform at Kirribilli House in Sydney on December 10, 2025. Photo: AFP