In the US, a family is suing OpenAI after their 16-year-old son, Adam, took his own life. His closest confidant wasn’t a friend, a counsellor, or a parent. It was a chatbot.
As a child and adolescent psychologist, I am deeply alarmed by the rampant exposure of young people to graphic violence on social media. The recent assassination of Charlie Kirk has tragically thrust this issue into the spotlight, revealing a shocking reality: social media companies are failing to protect our children from trauma that should never be normalized.
If you think young Australians are doing it tough now, brace yourself. By 2026, they’ll be staring down a perfect storm of pressures that make today’s youth anxiety epidemic look like a warm-up act.
It’s a statistic that might make you pause mid-bite. New findings from the University of Sydney show more than 40% of young Aussies are lonely. It’s a growing crisis in Australia, but modern life is eroding our ability to connect. And, while loneliness has many causes, experts are pointing to a quiet culprit hiding in plain sight – the decline of family dinner time.
If you’re a parent, teacher, or policymaker and you’re not worried about TikTok’s role in adolescent mental health, you should be.
James Sicily, the captain of my beloved Hawthorn, is lining up for a crucial set shot at goal with just 63 seconds remaining in the 2024 AFL semi-final against Port Adelaide. He hits the post and, ultimately, the Hawks lose the match by three points, ending our finals campaign.
You probably missed it (buried somewhere between the election postmortems and the slick handling of Daly Cherry-Evans by the Sea Eagles) the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre dropped a bombshell in March: marinating in social media, with its endless pings and dopamine hits, doesn’t just fray young nerves—it might actually rewire the emotional circuitry of the brain.
Australia is facing a silent epidemic: one in six of our children is living with a mental health condition, yet our policies and investments remain stubbornly focused on adults, leaving our youngest citizens in the shadows.
For decades, Australians have treated alcohol as a social passport. To refuse a drink was to risk ridicule. “C’mon, just one” was as much a part of adolescence as acne and awkward school photos. But something is shifting, and it’s happening in the very demographic most marketers assumed would keep the grog flowing: our young people.