Children are growing up with access to endless streams of content — posts from friends and family, mindless but harmless entertainment, as well as posts from extremist influencers, pornography, violent videos, and other material with the potential to cause great harm.

Those same spaces also expose children to possible abuse, cyberbullying and exploitation, while they offer a lifeline to children who are socially or geographically isolated, and provide communities a connection that would have been impossible before the internet age.

But the prime minister has determined the harms far outweigh the advantages and vows he will introduce a bill to ban children from the “scourge” of social media before the end of this year, a proposition that already has the in-principle support of the Coalition.

Facing unproven technologies, the might of global social media behemoths and few examples overseas to guide the government, it won’t be easy, even with political agreement.

Anthony Albanese has made a few signals however of how he sees a path to a social media ban.

The federal government had been quietly working on a ban proposal, but was forced to bring its announcement forward this week after South Australia moved to introduce a state-level ban.

Mr Albanese said on Tuesday morning he did not want it to devolve into an eight-way ban with different rules.