She tried to take the phone away. Then her daughter chased her with a knife

Sunday, 22 March 2026

New Zealand’s online safety laws were designed before social media and we are lagging well behind our peers internationally — leaving experts to say children are paying the price. Amelia Wade reports.

When Michelle* tried to take her daughter’s phone away, the 12-year-old chased her around the house with a knife.

“I had to barricade myself in my room. We also had to call the police several times because she just escalated and wouldn’t calm down.”

It was not an isolated incident.

In the past two years, Michelle estimates she has reported her daughter missing about 40 or 50 times.

“We’ve been assaulted multiple times. She’s smashed windows, or she just runs away,” she said.

“Taking the phone off was a physical impossibility.”

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For Michelle, what began as a familiar parenting dilemma — when to give a child a smartphone — quickly spiralled into something far more serious. She believes social media did not just expose her daughter to harmful content, but fundamentally changed her behaviour and made her more violent.

The desire to go viral and get likes from their peers drives extreme behaviour, said the mother.

“It encourages them to do that because they’ve got a platform,” she said.

“They’re in their own reality TV show.”

Michelle, who asked not to be named to protect her daughter’s identity, says she delayed giving her a phone for as long as she could. But by the age of 12, the pressure was overwhelming.

“All her friends had one. Some of them had phones from eight or nine,” she said.

Her daughter felt excluded and isolated. Eventually, Michelle relented, partly for safety reasons, so her daughter could contact her and partly because resisting seemed increasingly untenable.

“It felt like the only way she could stay connected.”

She tried to put safeguards in place: screen time limits, monitoring, conversations about online behaviour. But those measures proved ineffective.

“These kids have ways around it,” she said.

Even when access was restricted, her daughter used friends’ accounts or devices. Attempts to remove the phone altogether triggered extreme reactions.

“People say, ‘just take the phone off them’. It’s not that simple,” she said.

“When you’ve got a child who becomes volatile and violent, it’s not a straightforward decision.”

When Michelle began to see what social media platforms were feeding her daughter, she was horrified.

“I was really shocked by the violent content, like playground fights being posted to her at 12 years old.”

Alongside the violence was sexually explicit material, gang-related content, and videos referencing self-harm and suicide.

“Once you see that world, you can’t unsee it — it’s grubby, it’s violent and it’s pervasive.”

She says the content did not exist in isolation. It was shared, amplified and reinforced through peer networks.

“If anything dramatic comes along, it feeds that,” she said.

“They’re highly escalated and highly peer-driven.”

Conflicts that might once have been contained now spread rapidly through social media, she said, with arguments, threats and videos circulating across large networks of young people.

“There’s almost no secrets… things get out of hand and become catastrophes.”

She believes the platforms themselves encourage this escalation, rewarding dramatic or extreme content with attention and reach.

“It encourages them to do that because they’ve got a platform.”

The consequences, she says, have been severe not just for her daughter, but for many of her peers.

She describes a social environment where violence has become normalised. Many of the girls her daughter associated with had been assaulted, she said, and some had been hospitalised after group attacks.

“A lot of these girls are entering really dysfunctional relationships with violent boys,” she said.

She also described a culture in which harmful behaviour is minimised or excused.

“They’ll say, ‘she must have done something to deserve it’.”

In some cases, she said, intimate or abusive experiences were recorded and shared online without being recognised as violations.

“They don’t believe in the idea of privacy — they don’t understand it.”

After years of struggling to manage her daughter’s behaviour, Michelle sought professional help. Her daughter was eventually diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum and is now attending a specialist programme, which has significantly improved her behaviour.

But Michelle is clear that her experience is not unique.

Through support groups and other parents, she says she has encountered similar stories across a wide range of families, from low-income households to middle-class homes.

“It’s not just one type of family,” she said.

The effects ripple outward, she says, impacting siblings, straining relationships and, in some cases, contributing to family breakdown.

“It affects the whole family,” she said.

“There is a crisis within our youth.”

A system not built for the internet

Michelle’s experience sits within a broader debate about whether New Zealand is equipped to deal with the harms emerging from social media and other online platforms.

A growing body of research suggests the country’s regulatory framework has not kept pace with rapid technological change.

A major report by advocacy group Makes Sense, and commissioned by ACC, describes New Zealand’s system as “a net full of holes”.

“We don’t have an online safety framework that is coherent, strategic or consistent,” researcher Holly Brooker said.

Instead, New Zealand relies on a patchwork of legislation — including the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993 and the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 — which were developed before the rise of modern social media and artificial intelligence.

The result, Brooker says, is a system that is largely reactive, focusing on harm after it occurs rather than preventing it.

“We’re focused on individuals causing harm, not on platforms being designed in harmful ways,” she said.

New Zealand has fallen well behind our peers in regulating online, with the report showing amongst countries like Australia, the UK and USA, we are the most unregulated.

The report also warns New Zealand is failing to meet its obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in the digital environment.

One of the key challenges is that existing laws often require proof of intent to cause harm — a threshold that can be difficult to meet, particularly in cases involving emerging technologies such as deepfakes or coordinated online abuse.

At the same time, the main industry framework governing online platforms in New Zealand is voluntary and carries no enforcement powers.

“Content and conduct that is illegal in New Zealand is still easily accessible — and nothing is done to prevent it,” Brooker said.

“Our kids are at real risk here.”

A missed chance to modernise?

The gaps are not new but a comprehensive attempt to fix them was abandoned.

A major attempt to modernise the system was shelved. The Safer Online Services and Media Platforms review — launched in 2021 to overhaul New Zealand’s content regulation regime following the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch mosque attacks — was scrapped in 2023 after the change of government, despite strong stakeholder support.

The decision, made amid concerns about free speech and regulatory overreach, halted progress on comprehensive reform and left New Zealand relying on its existing patchwork system.

A parliamentary inquiry into online harm, released this month, has also criticised the thin legislative landscape.

Do you have a story about big tech? Email amelia.wade@thepost.co.nz

It found responsibility for online safety is spread across multiple agencies — including police, regulators, Netsafe and various government departments — with no single body accountable for oversight.

The lack of coordination, MPs said, has resulted in gaps in both prevention and enforcement.

The inquiry called for sweeping reforms, including restricting social media access for under-16s and establishing an independent online safety regulator with enforcement powers.

It also recommended treating online harm as a public health issue, reflecting its impact on mental health, development and education.

Central to the proposals is the idea of shifting responsibility onto platforms themselves — not just for the content they host, but for how their systems are designed.

That includes features such as algorithm-driven feeds and infinite scrolling, which MPs say can actively contribute to harm.

Other recommendations include banning so-called “nudify” apps used to generate fake sexual images, regulating deepfake technology, and requiring greater transparency around how platforms recommend content.

The case against sweeping powers

But the proposed reforms have also attracted criticism.

Retired District Court judge David Harvey argues the inquiry risks going too far, warning it could create a powerful censorship regime without sufficient evidence.

“A Government that implements this report wholesale will not have protected children,” he wrote in a five part criticism on his substack A Halfling’s View.

“It will have built a surveillance and censorship infrastructure that New Zealand will spend the next decade trying to dismantle.”

Harvey says the inquiry’s conclusions were based on an asserted crisis that was not adequately supported by population-level data.

He is particularly concerned about the proposal to establish an independent regulator with broad powers.

“The powers come first; the constraints follow,” he said.

He also raised concerns about how age restrictions on social media would be enforced, noting that effective systems would likely require some form of age verification, raising privacy issues.

He pointed to suggestions that the Government may need to consider the role of tools such as virtual private networks (VPNs), which can be used to bypass restrictions.

Harvey describes this as a potential “civil liberties red line”, warning that efforts to control access could lead to increased monitoring of internet use.

He supports more targeted interventions, such as banning specific harmful technologies, but argues broader reforms should be grounded in stronger evidence.

“The Government should start again — this time, with the evidence first.”

The Government is now weighing its response.

Education Minister Erica Stanford has indicated that restricting social media access for under-16s could be the first step, followed by broader legislation addressing online harm more comprehensively.

She has signalled support for stronger oversight of platforms, including mechanisms requiring companies to report on their practices.

“The way you get social media companies to change their behaviour … is that they’re having to report on certain things, that they’re being properly regulated,” she has said.

Why education isn’t enough

But experts warn the pace of change may be too slow.

Dr Samantha Marsh, a senior research fellow at the University of Auckland, says New Zealand is placing responsibility on children to manage platforms that are deliberately designed to capture attention.

“We’ve got a situation where our kids are being harmed at scale, and yet right now we’re doing nothing to protect them,” she said.

Marsh argues that the current approach, which is centred on digital literacy and education, is insufficient.

“You can teach a child how to manage their use… but as soon as you put them on these platforms, it’s out the window.”

She points to research showing 22 percent of teenagers meet the criteria for problematic social media use, which is associated with an increased risk of negative mental health outcomes.

For Marsh, the scale of the issue warrants a public health response.

“It’s not that something magical happens at 16… we’re trying to delay access for as long as possible.”

She supports stronger regulation, including age restrictions, but also argues that the broader digital environment — including algorithm-driven platforms and emerging technologies like AI companions — needs to be addressed.

“These platforms are designed to hijack the reward system in the brain… we’re patterning children for addiction from a young age.”

Beyond a simple ban

Michelle is not convinced that banning social media alone will solve the problem.

“We’re not really targeting the real problem, which is these companies,” she said.

She believes young people will simply migrate to other platforms, while companies continue to develop new products designed to attract and retain users.

Instead, she is calling for a more comprehensive approach that holds companies accountable for how their platforms operate.

Without that, she says, regulation risks falling behind a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

And she insists her experience is not an outlier.

Across different communities, she says, families are grappling with similar issues, often behind closed doors.

“Once you see what they’re seeing, you can’t unsee it,” she said.

“It’s violent and pervasive.”

*Name has been changed.

How parents can manage children’s phone use

Dr Samantha Marsh says parents should not rely on children to self-regulate on platforms designed to be highly engaging and difficult to disengage from.

Instead, she recommends a structured approach focused on delaying access, setting firm boundaries and maintaining oversight.

Delay access

Marsh says one of the most effective steps is to delay giving children smartphones and social media for as long as possible, particularly during key stages of brain development. The goal is to reduce early exposure, not eliminate risk entirely.

Set clear boundaries

Parents should establish non-negotiable rules around device use, such as:

• no phones in bedrooms overnight

• limits on daily use

She says boundaries need to be consistent and enforced by parents, not left to children.

Maintain oversight

Marsh recommends parents retain access to devices and accounts and actively monitor use, framing this as safety rather than surveillance.

Don’t rely on digital literacy alone

While education is important, Marsh says it is not enough on its own.

“You can teach a child how to manage their use … but as soon as you put them on these platforms, it’s out the window.”

Focus on exposure

She argues the issue is not just behaviour, but platform design, meaning parents should prioritise limiting exposure rather than expecting children to resist it.