Should social media be banned for over-16s too!? The 2026 Beaker Street Festival Great Debate

Interesting idea or nanny-state gone way too far? If babies weren't born to doom scroll, why do we think grown-ups are? Don't miss our hilarious annual battle of brains and bravado with two teams and Big Ideas' host Natasha Mitchell at the Beaker Street Festival: where science meets art. Australia was the first country in the world to ban under-16s from social media. France just struck down a push for the same.  Are adults immune to all the harms of these platforms? Should OVER-16s be banned too!?

TEAM AFFIRMATIVE: "THE VIRAL INFLUENZAS"

Dr Esmé Louise James, sex historian

Returning debate champion and sex historian, creator of the book and viral TikTok phenomenon Kinky History, co-host with her mathematician mother of two seasons of the Sextistics series on Youtube, and her first novel Becoming Venus is out on September 1, 2026.

Saul Eslake, economist

Saul has been chief economist at the big end of town with big banks, he now runs his own consultancy, is a Vice-Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Tasmania, advises Australia's Parliamentary Budget Office, serves on the Council on the Ageing, and is a regular expert chatterbox in the media.

Dr Meredith Castles, human-computer interaction researcher and lecturer

Meredith is a science communicator and a lecturer in human-computer interaction at the University of Tasmania's School of Information and Communication Technology. She's interested in ethical, accessible, inclusive, and human-centred technology — and how to design it so it's nice, not nasty.

TEAM NEGATIVE: "THE YAPPERS"

Professor Barbara Holland, statistician

Former reigning Beaker Street debate champion, Barbara is a mathematician in the School of Natural Sciences at the University of Tasmania. She fell in love with the power of statistics, made it her life's work, and works with biologists and uses stats to unravel the big biological puzzle that is the evolution of life on Earth.

Dr Kirsten Banks