Some behaviours obviously need government intervention. Murder is a good example. Armed robbery, also a crowd favourite. After that, the situation becomes less certain, and governments start to drift into what I call the “Public Good Wellness Zone,” where evidence is unclear, confidence is high, and everyone seems to have just discovered that your inner child is at risk.
I’m quite wary of that zone. Not because I’m anti-government, but because I’m worried about mission creep. Once the state begins “improving” citizens, it rarely stops at the parts that are actually broken.
A confession, I’m biased
I’m an ex-smoker, so I might be emotionally compromised. Or traumatised. Or simply nostalgic for the kind of self-destructive freedom that was once available to adults.
But I’m also biased in a different way because my father has smoked a pack a day for about 70 years and spends nearly his whole old age pension on cigarettes. Almost all of it. This makes cigarette tax seem less like a public health measure and more like punishment.
Here’s the tricky part. Cigarette taxes likely reduce smoking. They probably cut cancer rates. They most likely save hospital costs. Great.
They also hit the poor hardest, by definition, because the rich can afford their vices while the poor have to pay for them.They also promote a thriving illegal tobacco trade, because when something becomes costly enough, it stops being a product and turns into an entrepreneurial opportunity.
So I keep wondering: if we’re going to punish long-term smokers with decades of dependence, why not at least make an exception for pensioners who’ve been smoking since the Beatles were still together?
And if taxing tobacco is so commendable, could someone explain why we don’t put the same moral effort into alcohol? If the aim is to reduce harm, alcohol isn't exactly an innocent bystander. Yet somehow cigarettes are a public health crisis, while alcohol is a personality trait.
The new panic: teens and social media
This leads me to Australia’s under-16 social media ban, which has come with the kind of certainty typically associated with gravity.
I’ve heard this story before. TV was going to melt my brain. Video games were going to ruin my son’s soul. Now it’s social media, which, to be fair, is a bit more like carrying high school in your pocket, with an inbuilt popularity scoreboard and strangers who can message you at 1 a.m. So yes, there are real risks.
But it’s also where lonely kids find friends, weird kids find their tribe, and half the next generation learns comedy, design, and storytelling. That’s why I don’t love the blunt-instrument approach. Give me a ladder: under 13, no accounts. 13–15, yes, but with parental consent and strong safety settings. Then measure the outcomes like grown-ups.
The question is whether a blanket age ban is the right instrument, or whether it’s the policy equivalent of taking away all kitchen knives because someone once cut themselves making toast.
My rule: meddle as little as possible, and only when you can justify it
I have a simple instinct here. The more a policy messes with ordinary life, the stronger the evidence needs to be. Not “plausible.” Not “a lot of people feel.” Strong.
And it needs to pass what I’ll call the Meddling Test:
- How big is the harm, really?
- Is it harm to others, not just the person choosing it?
- Is agency compromised? (kids, addiction, manipulative design)
- Does the lever work, reliably?
- Is it proportional, and the least restrictive thing that could work?
- What second-order mess will it create? (black markets, workarounds, privacy creep)
- Who pays the cost? (and is it the usual suspects)
On teen social media, it's easy to argue both for concern and that the issue is complex. The harms differ greatly depending on the child and circumstances, and bans often lead to workarounds that bring additional privacy issues.
So my position is boring but, I think, sane: do less of the behaviour-shaping stuff by default. When you do intervene, build in serious evaluation, publish the results, and set it up so you can reverse course if it doesn’t work.
Because “for the children” is not a scientific method. And once a country hard-codes a moral panic into law, it tends to stick around long after the panic has moved on to the next shiny menace.
Meddle less. Measure more. And if we’re going to redesign childhood, I’d like the evidence to be better than a headline.