Prime Minister, I need to tell you something you won't hear from your advisers.

I felt vindicated when you announced the social media ban. For four years, I've been telling families across this nation what I saw on the frontline. For four years, I watched the mental health establishment dismiss what was destroying our children.

You showed balls of steel going first globally. You positioned this as Australia leading the world. Your eSafety commissioner called it "the first true antidote" to a vast social media experiment on young people.

But here's the truth: if this keeps going the way it is, your legacy policy will be forgotten the moment you step down.

I've Spent Eight Years Where Your Experts Haven't Been

I've worked with over 3,500 families from every corner of Australia. Not in clinical settings. Not in 50-minute sessions. I spend 150+ contact hours with each family. I see what happens when the system fails them.

Six years ago, 10-15% of children arriving at my programs were on ADHD medication. I remember thinking that was too much.

Today, 75-85% arrive on Ritalin, Concerta, or Vyvanse. Speed, Prime Minister. We're giving children speed.

Between 2003 and 2022, ADHD prescriptions increased tenfold — from 20,147 young people to 246,021. The biggest spike happened during 2020-2021, when children were locked down and glued to screens.

The timing is damning. The very period when social media use exploded coincides with the medication explosion.

I need a pharmacist on program just to manage all the drugs these children arrive with. Most can't tell me what the medications do. Many are on six or seven different drugs. Some medications exist only to counteract the side effects of earlier medications.

After ten days with us, families ask if their children can reduce or stop their medication. The children ask the same question. They feel alive. They've detoxed from tech. They've pushed themselves beyond what they thought possible.

Someone was finally real and raw with them.

The System Treats Symptoms While Ignoring the Disease

For years, I watched the same pattern across wealthy families, poor families, rural and city families. Children diagnosed with depression, anxiety, self-mutilation, suicidal tendencies. Doctors and mental health experts treated the symptoms but never the cause.

Treatment didn't work. Medication increased. Families deteriorated.

Five years ago, I put the pieces together. Social media addiction was destroying these children. But no one would talk about it.

The allied health establishment told families the mental health spike was due to "reduced stigma" — people finally seeking help. They said we should expect diagnoses to plateau once everyone comfortable seeking support had done so.

That never happened. The crisis accelerated.

Your government's $1 billion mental health investment promises 31 new Medicare Mental Health Centres, 58 headspace services, and 20 Youth Specialist Care Centres.

More infrastructure for the same failing therapeutic models.

I've worked with families who spent six years seeing psychologists, psychiatrists, and counsellors. Six years on multiple medications. Six years getting worse, not better.

Then they come to me. Ten days later, they're asking to reduce medication.

The Ban Alone Is Political Theatre

Your social media ban went live in December 2025. Children bypassed it immediately. VPNs work. Age-assurance tools misclassify users.

Even experts acknowledge the problem. "Ultimately, reducing online harm would be a great outcome; however, we know from evidence that 'banning' anything from young people won't work on its own," said Louise La Sala from Orygen, Australia's National Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health.

The ban addresses a symptom whilst ignoring the disease. Tech addiction is one manifestation of deeper systemic failures in how Australia supports its youth.

You need complementary measures. Graphic public awareness campaigns like we ran for HIV/AIDS in the 1980s. Imagine a parent cooking dinner, watching TV, and seeing an ad: "Social media — is it destroying your child?" Cut to a teenager in their bedroom picking up a sharp object.

Schools need entertaining, resonant lessons on the horrors of social media for Years 6-9. Then switch gears for Years 10-12 and teach the benefits — how social media builds businesses, amplifies voices, creates wealth.

Your government's silence on social media for years made parents think it was safe. The ban creates stigma, which helps. But stigma alone won't save children already in crisis.

Early Intervention Could Have Prevented This

I've seen children suspended from school seven, eight, nine times before anyone intervenes properly. By then, families are broken. Parents feel isolated, ashamed, financially crushed. Marriages collapse. Children lose all confidence and self-belief.

Research proves what I see on the ground. School suspensions and arrests have negative impacts on subsequent violent behaviour. The current system makes things worse.

Australian research with 34,855 children proves early identification works. Eighteen factors predict suspension risk. Multi-sector information available at school entry can identify at-risk students.

Catching children at suspension one instead of suspension seven could prevent the entire descent into crisis.

The Youth Regiment model does this. We enter schools, work with children and teachers, build relationships with principals. After our program, if a child needs extra support, schools can recommend us. In an ideal world, state or federal government funding makes this accessible.

I've won your Prime Minister's Veteran Employment Awards in two categories. I've testified as an expert witness at the Queensland Youth Justice Reform Select Committee. I've proven this works with 3,500 families.

Yet I'm still convincing schools and begging for government funding.

My guess? The people who recommend and implement policy all read from the same textbook. I don't have a degree, so the government sees me as too much of a risk.

But I have something your experts don't: eight years on the frontline of this epidemic, more contact hours with troubled families than any allied health professional in this country, and results that speak for themselves.

Where Australia Will Be in 15 Years

If nothing fundamentally changes beyond this ban, I can tell you exactly where we're heading.

Productivity collapses. GDP stagnates. Innovation dies.

We become a nation of mental health experts treating a country with a 90-95% mental health diagnosis rate.

Nearly one in five Australians already receives mental health prescriptions. The rate of high-frequency users has doubled since 2012. For youth, the trajectory is steeper.

Your $1 billion investment will fund more of the same. More counselling that doesn't work. More medication that creates dependency. More infrastructure for failing therapeutic models.

If just 1% of that funding went to proven frontline programs like ours, outcomes would transform. One percent would generate more success than the other 99% spent in areas that have proven failure on a massive scale.

You Have a Legacy-Defining Moment

Prime Minister, you showed courage going first on the social media ban. You positioned Australia as a global leader. Other nations are watching.

But courage without comprehensive action becomes remembered failure.

You need outside advisers with real skin in the game. Not career politicians. Not experts who've never stepped foot on the frontline of this epidemic.

You need people who've spent years with these families. Who've seen what works and what fails. Who can tell you the uncomfortable truth your establishment advisers won't.

The social media ban is a start. But without early intervention through schools, collaboration with allied health to implement strategies before lifetime medication, and policy changes that redirect funding to proven methods, this policy will be forgotten.

Make people believe you're serious about this. Make it work with comprehensive support. Maybe have an outside adviser who's been in the trenches, not another career politician or expert reading from the same failed textbook.

Senator Lambie mentored on my 40th program. She gave a five-minute speech about our work on the senate floor. She's seen firsthand what happens when you catch children early, when you address root causes instead of symptoms.

This could be remembered for 200 years. Australia leading the world not just with a ban, but with a comprehensive system that actually saves children.

Or it gets forgotten the day you leave office.

The choice is yours.

Matthew French
Founder & CEO The Youth Regiment

Clubs and Community Education Award 2026 collaboration Campsie RSL Group
Former Director & Co Founder, Veteran Mentors
Prime Minister's Veteran Employment Awards Winner 2024

Medium size employer of the year & Outstanding business of the year