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What if the real risk of social media for young people isn’t what they’re looking at — but what it’s doing to how they see themselves?
In this episode, we go beyond the headlines about Australia’s social media ban for under-16s — which we now know 85% of affected teens are circumventing — and dig into a disturbing piece of neuroscience research out of Milan that almost nobody in the policy debate is talking about.
Researchers at the Humane Technology Lab at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart studied nearly 100 young adults using virtual reality body illusion experiments. Their finding: the longer someone has been using Instagram, the more fluid and permeable their sense of facial identity becomes. Put simply, heavy Instagram users are more likely to momentarily experience a stranger’s face as their own.
This isn’t science fiction — it’s peer-reviewed neuroscience pointing to something the ban debate has entirely skipped: social media may not just affect how teens feel about their bodies, but how their brains construct the very feeling of being themselves.
We also examine why Australia’s ban is struggling, with platforms reportedly allowing children to repeatedly attempt age verification until they pass, and the eSafety Commissioner’s own compliance report confirming account removals have not yet produced measurable reductions in harm. If the policy isn’t working and the science is being ignored, who is actually protecting our kids?
WHAT THE LISTENER WILL LEARN
The specific enforcement failures behind Australia’s social media ban and why policy intent has not translated into measurable outcomes
How neuroscientists study bodily identity using virtual reality illusions, and what the facial ownership experiment at Milan’s Humane Technology Lab revealed
The distinction between body image research (how you feel about your appearance) and bodily identity research (whether your brain knows which body is yours)
Why adolescence is the neurologically critical window for identity formation and why today’s generation faces risks that earlier generations did not
What the Digital Erosion of Bodily Identity Hypothesis predicts about the long-term effects of image-based social media use
What kinds of longitudinal research are now urgently needed and why they haven’t happened yet
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