A general rule in forecasting says that regulation follows innovation.

Outside of medicine, we are first exposed to innovations in a very pure and direct way. Only after the side-effects become abundantly clear do governments slowly introduce regulations. This order is ideal since we don’t want to over-regulate too early and hinder innovation.

After observing the effects of an innovation for long enough, the negative impacts become clear, and we try to regulate these problems away.

AirBnb for example was founded in 2007 (and introduced in 2012 in Australia), and it made any private dwelling or spare room in a private dwelling a hotel room. This innovation created new income earning opportunities for some, injected more tourism into some areas, and forced hotels to step up their game.

AirBnb also pushed properties from the long-term rental market, turned whole suburbs into AirBnb deserts (Athens and Barcelona being the most famous examples), and made urban planning incredibly difficult.

Around the world, AirBnb is now starting to be heavily regulated.

Regulation of negative side-effects

The exact outcomes are open, but the intention clearly is to regulate away the negative side-effects. AirBnb tries to influence the looming regulations by pushing out policy suggestions themselves and sponsoring local government events. The same narrative rings true for Uber but our main focus today shall be on social media.

Social media has only been around for about two decades and its impacts weren’t clear immediately. Intellectual property rights, interpersonal communication, privacy, freedom of speech, and bullying are just some aspects of our lives that were dramatically affected by this innovation.

Another clearly documented side-effect of social media is a decline in mental health. Image-based social media platforms (Instagram and TikTok) are godawful for your mental health. If you are a woman and under 30 your mental health gets hammered by usage of these platforms. Use them for work if needed, but on a personal level, there is very little for you to be won on those platforms.

Decline in mental health

My bashing of these platforms isn’t just a personal rant. Let me refer you to Jonathan Haidt’s great book The Anxious Generation to learn more about the impacts of social media.

Image-based social media severely amplifies body-image issues. By scrolling through countless images of sexy models and bodybuilders on Instagram for hours each day, we create unforgivingly high beauty standards for our own bodies. Sure, being severely overweight has health consequences and should be avoided but viewing any deviation from an impossibly high ideal as a failure has terrible mental health consequences.

Steering us towards healthier body weights and lifestyles is well intentioned, but the mental health outcomes among young people are terrible.

We now have millions of young Australians (especially women) on anti-depressants. One in five young women aged 20 claimed at the last census to have a medically-diagnosed chronic mental health condition, and in survey after survey Gen Z (born 2000-17) comes up as being the most pessimistic and misanthropic generation ever.

We’ve known about the impact that altered photos of models has had on the mental health of young women at least since the 1990s. The omnipresent nature of social media amplified the negative side-effects like crazy. Suddenly it’s not just models that look like models but seemingly everyone other than you.

World of work

Social media also extended the “you are not good enough” narrative into the world of work. An office equivalent to body-image issues has emerged that I call ‘work-image issues’.

Work-image issues refer to the anxiety and dissatisfaction young people feel when their jobs don’t match the idealised version of work portrayed by influencers and career gurus. It’s easy to have work-image issues arise when your workday or your career doesn’t look as exciting, meaningful, or financially rewarding as you are led to believe it should be on social media, or in well-meaning motivational Ted Talks.

This comparison can lead to feelings of failure and dissatisfaction with one’s own professional life. This phenomenon also isn’t new. Business and self-help books have long advised readers on how to turn their passions into lucrative ideas. Social media has exposed us more frequently to such narratives.

It is certainly desirable to have a job that deeply fulfils you, that is fun all the time and that essentially pays you to engage in your hobby. If you can, you should certainly grab such a job.

Unrealistic expectations

How likely do you think it is that we can align the 14 million jobs in Australia with 14 million individual passions and desires? Sure, there will be an overlap, but it will always be the privilege of a minority to have a job that they would consider deeply meaningful.

We must let go of these unrealistic beauty standards regarding our employment. This is, of course, very hard to do if we binge watch the Gary Vs, Simon Sineks, and Tony Robbins’ of this world. Your LinkedIn timelines should be full of talk about your industry but increasingly it is full of messages about what your job should look like. It’s hard to feel good about your job under such circumstances.

Where to from here? I think we will slowly regulate social media and win the right to impact the algorithms that feed us content. We might be able to set our LinkedIn to only show content that is informational in nature.

We might see strict regulation of usage regarding social media. All research that I have seen says that being on social media under the age of 16 is pure madness. I would set that age limit higher but 16 is a great starting point.

Social media is incredibly hard to regulate but these regulations will most certainly come.

Demographer Simon Kuestenmacher is a co-founder of The Demographics Group. His columns, media commentary and public speaking focus on current socio-demographic trends and how these impact Australia. His podcast, Demographics Decoded, explores the world through the demographic lens. Follow Simon on Twitter (X), Facebook, LinkedIn for daily data insights in short format.