The Glass Wall They Built

Foreword / Introduction

This poem is written from the perspective of an Australian young person, as they are the first to experience the social media bans for those considered ‘too young’ by the measures of adults. However, with Australia being the first, my fear is that they are just that—only the first.

It isn’t just the fear of isolation. It is far more than that. It is the way adults keep creating ‘us versus them’ situations. In the long run, this censorship creates a slippery slope to much worse problems. If the government decides what is ‘safe’ for us to see, what stops them from blocking our access to climate protests because they are ‘disruptive’? Or hiding the reality of wars because it is ‘too distressing’ for us? It risks creating a generation that is blind to the world’s real injustices.

Also, the way people claim to be left-wing and opposed to fascism, but then support one of its most important tenets—censorship—is something that has truly sickened me.

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Poem: The Glass Wall They Built [Free-verse, protest, social commentary]

They looked at us scrolling at midnight, thumbs glowing blue,
and decided: we know what you need better than you do.
Not a conversation. Not a question. Not a single voice from children their age
who might have said, “Yeah, the algorithm is designed to trap us, but—”
but no—they chose the hammer over the mirror.

10 December came like a thief in school uniforms.
Millions of accounts. Gone. Just like that.
Your friends’ usernames erased because some senator decided
deletion was the answer to a problem that needed redesign.
They called it protection. It looked like avoidance.

Here’s the thing: the dangers are real.
The algorithms are literally built to addict us.
The companies know exactly how to keep us scrolling,
how to make us feel wrong about our bodies,
how to make 15 minutes stretch into four hours.
I get it. Adults aren’t wrong about that part.

But banning us wasn’t fixing it.
It was just… removing us from the equation.
Like if your house is messy, you don’t burn it down—
you clean it.

They could have regulated the platforms.
Made algorithmic feeds transparent.
Limited screen time features for under-18s.
Forced companies to actually care about mental health
instead of engagement metrics.
They could’ve demanded better, stricter, smarter.

Instead, they banned us.

And here’s what nobody’s saying out loud:
when you remove the problem instead of fixing it,
you’re not solving anything.
You’re just moving it.

Some children will find workarounds—VPNs, fake accounts, darker corners.
Some children will just be isolated instead.
Some children will lose the only place
where they could reach out on bad days,
find people who understood,
create something that mattered.

The algorithms were the disease.
We were never the disease.
But we’re the ones who got quarantined.

They worry about our mental health.
So they take away the community spaces where we process our mental health.
Logic, I guess.
The kind of logic that makes sense
when you’ve never actually been a teenager
scrolling through the internet at 3 AM,
looking for proof that you’re not alone.

Yes, TikTok is designed to trap you.
Yes, Instagram makes you hate yourself.
Yes, the algorithm is a monster that feeds on your worst moments.
I’m not arguing that.

I’m arguing that the solution wasn’t to cut off our hands
so we’d stop reaching.

It was to demand better hands.
Better platforms.
Better regulations.
Better choices.

Instead, they chose the easy way.
The way that makes them look like they’re doing something,
protecting something,
caring.

But protecting us from a problem
instead of protecting us in that space
is just another word for giving up.

It’s saying, “We can’t fix this, so you don’t get to have it.”
And that’s not protection.
That’s punishment dressed up like policy.

The platforms needed regulating.
Age-appropriate algorithms need to exist.
Mental health resources should be built in, not banned out.
Transparency should be mandatory.
Addiction mechanics should be illegal.

All of that could have happened.
All of that should have happened.

But it’s easier to blame the children for being addicted
than to hold the billionaires accountable
for building the addiction in the first place.

So here we are.
10 December.
A glass wall between me and the space
where I used to exist.

And the people who built it keep insisting
they’re protecting me.
They keep not noticing
that I’m the one who is suffocating.

This is what happens when you make policy
without asking the people it’s for.
This is what happens when the real problem—
the platforms, the algorithms, the design—
gets easier to ignore
than the symptom:
us.