Author: Joanne Orlando, Researcher: Digital Literacy and Digital Wellbeing, Western Sydney University

If historical trends are anything to go by, most young people in the United States will not vote at this week’s presidential election. For example, at the 2016 presidential election, less than half of Americans aged 18 to 29 cast their ballot. But a new campaign on the hugely popular online gaming platform Roblox aims to encourage young people in the US to get out and exercise their democratic right on Tuesday. The “Virtual Vote” initiative is a partnership between Roblox game developers and a national political non-profit organisation called HeadCount. It has already engaged thousands of Roblox users –…

The federal government has committed to a national plan to ban children from social media. Details are still scarce. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has acknowledged that “no government is going to be able to protect every child from every threat, but we have to do all we can”. But banning children from social media isn’t going to fix the problem of online harms faced by young people – it’s only going to put the problem on pause. That’s because when children reach an age when they can use social media, they are still going to face many of the same…