Video transcript
NSW Premier's Debating Challenge 2022 - Years 7 and 8 State Final

[intro music]

[applause]

ABBY PETERSON-HAMPSHIRE: Welcome to the state final of Premier's Debating Challenge for Years 7 and 8. I would like to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of this land on which we meet today. These are the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. I extend my respect to all Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islander people here today.

The debate is between Bellingen High School and James Ruse Agricultural High School. The affirmative teams from Bellingen High School is first speaker Mollie Young, second speaker Evie Laverty, third speaker Bianca Dyson, and fourth speaker Laura McNeil.

The negative team from James Ruse Agricultural High School is first speaker Sophie Allworth, second speaker Jacinta Kong, third speaker Lillian Kong, and fourth speaker Harsha Sheoran. The adjudicators for this debate are Ellie Stevenson, Maja Vasic, Hugh Bartley, Desmond Ho, and Ally Pitt.

The speaking time for this debate is 6 minutes. There will be a warning bell at 4 minutes, 2 bells at 6 minutes, and a continuous bell at 7 minutes. The topic for this debate is that the Australian government should lock all online gaming sites and apps on weekdays. Finally, please make sure all mobile phones are switched off. Now please welcome the affirmative team to begin this debate.

[applause]

MOLLIE YOUNG: Good morning. Right now, our society is entrapped by online gaming apps and websites. That, as we've seen in recent years, is creating a problem in our world. Through this change, beginning at the start of 2023, all online gaming apps and websites will be blocked from Monday through Fridays unless approved specifically by the Department of Education as educational for things such as reading, math, spelling, and quizzes. This will affect all of Australia, most specifically children, teens, and other adults that play online.

My arguments are that these online games are addictive, that are affecting their health, and that school aged children are getting bad grades due to being on their games instead of studying, doing their assignments, et cetera. Our second speaker will talk about the benefits we will see from less electricity being used and overall health of games. Now on to my first argument.

Online games are addictive. There's no doubt about it. It's so similar to gambling, yet these companies refuse to admit it. You win one game and instead of leaving it there, this dopamine hit of seeing those points and points go up causes people to keep playing, convinced they can win again.

These gamblers waste away in both casino and now gaming chairs. One hour of playing, turning to 2, 2 turning into the whole night. The blue light from the screens, from TVs, phones, laptops, and other devices tricks your brain to think it's still day, preventing sleep. Sleep deprivation is terrible for mental and physical health as your brain and body hasn't had a chance to rest.

These past few decades from when online games have gained popularity, there has been a massive influx of mental and physical health conditions, such as anxiety, depression, anger issues from violent games and losing, obesity from not doing physical exercise, and malnutrition from not eating enough healthy foods, from skipping out on important meals during the day and just eating chips and sugary sweets. These are bad as they can evolve into more serious health conditions, such as eating disorders, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts and actions, abusive vocabulary and actions, Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart conditions. All of these can lead to the death of these addicted people and the death of those around them. We've never seen the sheer amount of these health conditions before these games were introduced, obviously creating a direct link.

Preventing these people from playing these games on weekdays would most likely cause withdrawals, and we accept that. But in the long term, it will be better for their health and well-being for those health problems would be massively prevented. This block will also mean similar to when a person quits smoking, and they felt their lungs clear up. They'll no longer feel the need to play on weekends as they've seen and felt the benefits of a healthy lifestyle.

Now on to my second argument. School-aged children spend their afternoon glued to their games, not doing homework assignments or studying for tests that they obviously need to do. They're on their screens, staying up, not doing, staying up, not doing the studying and, as I've mentioned previously, not getting enough sleep, which is terrible for their mental health.

They're not sleeping during that night. And so when they're at school, they may be sleeping in class and that means they're missing out on important information, the whole reason they go to school. This causes these students to move down in classes and not doing the best they can.

[bell rings]

And they're falling behind their peers. Blocking these online gaming websites means they'll have time to study instead of being alert to stay on games. Thank you.

[applause]

SOPHIE ALLWORTH: You can start my time in 3, 2, 1. The opposition is proposing that under their characterisation of kids as having the lack of self-control to stop themselves from playing the games until it spirals and spirals and spirals into something that's so physically harmful. We feel that we allow them the opportunity under their model to turn to more toxic forms of entertainment.

I'll be doing 3 main things in my speech. Number one, rebutting the opposition. Number 2, describing how each world will look like, and number 3, presenting 2 points. Number one, why children will turn to more harmful worlds, while forms of entertainment, rather, and 2, how they deserve a break, and games like to give them this break. My second speaker will be describing how organic change is in place already and kids don't play games at school, which is where the procrastination was most harmful.

So the opposition, under my rebuttal, the opposition got up and told you that there were actually big physical harms that came from games, such as the blue light exposure. We agree. This is fairly bad. The blue light does exist.

But I have 2 main reasons like why this is not less important, but why the change doesn't actually stop this. Number one, the change doesn't actually stop kids from using streams. They can still find very interesting ways to use their time that weren't games.

And number 2, parents probably step in before these like games get like super addictive because they care about these kids. [? inaudible ?] and addictive games have a price. Usually because addictive games are the ones that are really fun. The really fun games were the ones that probably had more software to run. And parents probably know they exist and have put these screen time measures in plan.

And furthermore, they said these things were addictive. And they used this kind of strange idea of casinos and their address-- it leads to drastic ideas of eating sweets, suicidal thoughts, and eating disorders. There are 2 reasons why we feel this is kind of incorrect.

Number one, they're kind of a mischaracterisation, because kids can't gamble. It's not fun for them. They don't really have any money.

And number 2, we thought things like eating disorders were actually triggered by constant comparison to other people, which was more commonly found in social media. If there were any games that triggered eating disorders, they would probably be cancelled. And there are no games like that.

And now my second thing that I wanted to do, which was describing the world. So under the status quo, number one, children connect to the DET internet at school. These block games, social media, and uneducational sites at school. There are actually a lot more crackdown on these kind of things. There are less and less loopholes over time, as my second speaker will explain.

And under organic change, kids mostly do schoolwork for 4 reasons at school. Number one, it's hard to avoid being caught by the teacher. Number 2, it's hard to find these sites that are fun when the teacher briefly uses the classroom because most of them are banned. Number 3, it benefits their own learning, which most kids care about to some degree, because education is important to the future, parents motivate kids for good grades, and they need to do school schoolwork for good grades, which was positive affirmation and intellectual ability. And number 4, they finished schoolwork because schoolwork becomes homework, and then they want to kind of relax at home.

And we feel like school was the best way for them to learn because there are actual professional teachers. And now I'm going to characterise these kids, what they look like under the status quo at home. Weekdays, number one, they finish homework. They get into trouble with parents and teachers if they don't.

Number 2, they play games, but it's unlikely to be for long stretches of time to the point that it is unhealthy and is completely exaggerated by the opposition. Number A, parents have screen time. Most care enough about the kids to know about the harms of prolonged screen time, and B kids have school the next day, and they're going to be tired if they do it for too much. And C, they want to play these games because it is fun. And these are the reasons why it is not out of control.

Games are fun. We admit that, A, because 2 reasons. A, game companies want money. They target things that interest kids. B, kids can pool friends during this time and do teen games.

After the change, we believe that kids who went on to games would go to other entertaining apps, for example, social media. Social media probably is not as fun for games because kids because think it's not as interactive. But they still want this break because they are tired after school. It helps them unwind and they are bored. They have nothing else to do.

[bell rings]

Which leads me to my first point. Kids would turn to other more harmful ways of entertainment if we were to consider, as the affirmative said, in their best world, that games were actually harmful. So we have already proven that they would go to social media, which is bad because A, it is a lot harder to monitor for parents because there are many ways to access it. Parents have little control of social media because kids probably know a lot more about these loopholes.

On finding these apps, for example, you can use Instagram online. B, social media is a toxic place because, one, people have a lot of freedom to say what they want. And even if there are measures to report and remove these controversial content, it is hard to in time for all the clicks because news spreads quite quickly, because more quick clicks equals more money.

And even then, really influencing people have control over these. For example, money and power. For example, Elon Musk has bought Twitter. He is very fanatic about freedom of speech. He has basically fired most of the people who worked under censorship.

So Twitter has basically no censorship. It is a very problematic place. And kids are drawn to these apps with controversy like Twitter, because A, they're bored. They can't talk to their friends all the time on social media. B, it's interesting. Controversy is fun. And kids get so hooked because they are bored and exposed to harmful content, for example, like racist tweets.

Gaming apps are set in stone. No one can post outside in the game, or of the game, rather. Posts usually are deleted after the game finishes.

Social media people have-- sharing opinions which can be toxic. Because out of millions of users, there are bad people there who want to make people feel bad. There's also toxic femininity, cancel culture, which creates like unforgiving nature, and they're probably going to learn this over time because they spend so much per day on it.

And even in the best world, all they looked at was feel good stories, more and more and more stories based on search history, which kids enjoy, and more addictive than games because games are like the same thing, and posts are always developing, spending time on it. And it exposes kids to these ideas in an improper fashion. They do not know about it, but can't guarantee social media reveals information in a safe manner for these children.

[bell rings]

For example, we have sex education at school, like seeing a post and believing what you see, because people sound convincing about this. This is a harmful manner in which kids learn information about the world that they need to know. And it's why they are less likely to be on social media on the status quo because social media is like used for game-- thing on the game.

Which leads to my second argument, kids deserve a break and games were a better way to do this. Kids in both worlds, and probably, after school have free time. Why do they deserve a break?

Number one, they're working through the day and more productive at school. Maybe [? inaudible ?] --. And games make them happy, and it allows them to wind down with friends. It's also practical because there are strategy games. One requires a--

What happens after the change? They can't game on weekends. They're probably going to be fanatic about going to game on the weekends. And that means they're going to be sitting down for longer stretches of time.

Yes, the harms that the affirmative team brought up will be happening because they're going to, really want to play games on the weekend for longer periods of time. And usually on weekends, people bond with family because with family, they get to go out on family outings. And these were the health benefits we needed. And they can't do that as they're playing games. [? inaudible ?]

[applause]

EVIE LAVERTY: So I'd just like to start with a few pieces of rebuttal. So firstly, the negative team said that games wouldn't cause eating disorders as much. And we agree that the reason eating disorders-- these people is not caused by the actual game. People aren't actually getting eating disorders from the content in the game itself, but rather how much time they're spending on the game.

They are quite literally forgetting to eat because they are so engulfed in the game, they are not eating enough. Or on the other side of it, they're overeating because they're not paying attention. They're not thinking about the quantity of the food they're eating.

The negative team also rebutted by saying that being on screens too much happens, anyway. And yes, screen time is happening way too much. But by implementing our model, this will solve the issue that the negative team has suggested because we are reducing the amount of screen time, which is beneficial for many physical and mental reasons, like children will create other connections, and some other things I will go more in depth in my arguments.

Their first speaker also said that kids know not to spiral into games. But whilst they might know this, people who create the games create the game specifically so that smart kids will all addicted, even though they know the consequences of what could happen. The people making these games have made it specifically so it will happen.

So it is going to happen, anyway. People will still get addicted, even if they are aware. And as my first speaker said, it is addictive, anyway.

The affirmative said that parents will step in and solve this issue. But in recent years, there's been many grown adults still living with their parents without a job or income on these games all day. It's not only just about parents stepping in and getting to stop these kids from spending too much time on the game.

There could be many different factors that come into this. The parent might be out. They might work late. The parent might not actually be aware. The child could be sneaking the game. There's too many ways around this for the negative to use that as an actual argument in this debate.

They also said that teachers aren't letting them on websites in school. And that many students, instead of doing what they're working, they're sneaking games in school, and they're not doing the work that they're supposed to. Well, the Department of Education, for example, has so many websites blocked, there are so many websites and games that you can't actually access at school.

And as my first speaker said in our model, that we're not going to scratch the idea of educational games, just the harmful ones and ones that aren't necessary. But the ones that are still necessary to learning, such as Prodigy, which is a math game targeted at primary schools, such as apps like Kahoot on people's phones, these are still beneficial to learning. We do not want to get rid of these apps and online games that actually help children learn.

They also said that gaming is more severe than social media. But social media is just as addictive. And just by banning games, this is not going to solve all screen time issues. Because social media is still addictive. This is still going to happen, anyway.

And people will still be able to enjoy themselves on the weekend, anyway. They will still be able to play these games on the weekend. It's just they won't have so much time wasted on it during the weekdays.

Now to begin my arguments, my team's third argument is that by banning these games, a benefit we will see is less electricity being used. This is important for 3 main reasons.

[bell rings]

The first reason being that companies, households, schools, and other places of work will save money because people won't be using extra Wi-Fi on what might be a quick game, such as Subway Surfers on a lunch break, on an app on their phone, or an online game that they might play. Such as at school, like, a child might bring their Nintendo switch and connect it to the Wi-Fi to play over a lunch break. We all know that Wi-Fi is insanely expensive.

If we implemented our model, it would be saving a lot of money on Wi-Fi, which is a benefit to our economy, people's personal money situations, such as people's home lives. They're not going to be wasting so much time on the game at home, which could actually save quite a lot of money on WI-Fi, on a personal level, but also the whole of Australia schooling system saving money in the economy. Things like that, which is, as we know, money is essential.

My second benefit to this point is that by using less electricity, less coal is being dug up for this electricity to be produced, to be made. So like TV, like charging your phone after you play a game, this is all where the electricity is being used. And this amazing benefit will mean that less greenhouse gases and other petrol supplements at the coal mine specifically are going to be needed to use, which we all know is going to help our climate crisis, which is a big issue that we're facing today in the world. And it's also going to just help directly the environment surrounding, and it's just going to overall be better for our environment and our world, the climate crisis we're facing.

The third benefit to this rule is that Wi-Fi and service providers won't be as slow because they're not going to be chewed by people playing these games. It's not going to--

[bell rings]

--it's not going to chew. The people aren't going to be having to wait. And in schools, they're not going to be having to be waiting for the devices to load so much because the Wi-Fi will be faster. And this is a positive change and this is going to mean more work will be done and more learning will be done.

My second argument in this debate is that by enforcing our model, we are going to improve the overall health of gamers. Gamers that are both children and adults are currently extremely addicted to online gaming. And this has many negative impacts on their health.

Gamers often spend a lot of time on these games and eventually begin to take in some of the morals these games are suggesting. Such as in a violent game involving killing, they develop ideas such as kill or be killed. These are unhealthy morals and have a knock-on effect and have knock-on health effects like short temper, anger issues, anxiety, depression, and paranoia. If we are to ban online gaming during the week, it would encourage people to create connections with their family members--

[bell rings]

--which are much better morals than what these games are suggesting. Thank you.

[applause]

JACINTA KONG: So where the affirmative team went wrong today was that their second speaker absolutely conceded in their introduction that games were not the issue in this debate today, and rather, they would be trying to solve addiction because that was where the majority of their harms came from. However, like my first speaker proved, we believe that addiction was never going to be a problem that could be solved by the affirmative team's model today. Because there were other things, such as social media that would step in in place of these games that would provide as more addictive means to be entertained. So we believe that because the second speaker of the affirmative team has conceded this, they were never able to prove why banning gaming on weekdays were able to win them the debate today.

So in this debate, I will be doing 2 things. In my speech, I'll be doing 2 things. Sorry.

Firstly, I'll be providing the opposition. And secondly, I'll be proving some substantive as to how in the status quo there was already some level of change that enforces benefits, such as time management. So, so far, there were 2 themes, firstly, how is this going to affect children and their lives? And secondly, what were the alternatives to gaming and what would the world look like?

So starting with the first, how is this going to affect children and their lives? So the opposition came up and told us that it was addictive for children, and it was extremely harmful. They gave us extremely uncharitable examples by saying that they would get malnutrition from not eating all day, and this could result in eating disorders and death.

However, like I said, this is extremely uncharitable. And it was not well-proven why it would reach that extent. While we believe that in their world, because we ban these children from having a break after school, they are likely to play more games during the weekends. This would lead to more eating disorders or malnutrition because they don't need to go to school, because they have the whole day to spend on games.

While in our world they still need to go to school. They still need to engage in extracurricular activities from their school. And we believe that. So it is just extremely unlikely that in our world these children will develop eating disorders.

So they also came up and told you that it would lead to a bad education. However, we believe that firstly-- sorry. We believe firstly, the standard of education was never really going to change, or it was going to be worse in their world because children were going to have other harmful distractions to do in class. They were never able to prove why getting rid of gaming would suddenly get rid of the attitude that some children have that they do not want to pay attention to school, that they are not committed to education.

So we believe that they were never able to prove why getting rid of gaming would like increase the standard of education. However, we believe that in our world, you have like these children being able to take a break, which means that they will be able to manage their time and that they are more likely to want to do their homework so that they can game. And it's also an incentive that parents can use to help promote them doing their homework.

So we came up and told you that gaming was essentially a break, and that children deserved a childhood, and that gaming constantly on weekends was going to be even more harmful. So the opposition gave a strange response by saying that they cannot really access games at school and that they will only be able to access educational games. However, the status quo that we are promoting right now is to prove that education-- sorry. We believe that this is just the status quo right now. So this doesn't really stand as a valid rebuttal.

So moving on to the second theme, what were the alternatives to gaming? So the opposition came up and told us that screen time will be reduced. However, we believe that this is not true because technology still can be used. And we believe that these children are likely going to go to social media, or texting their friends, or other means that uses technology to be distracted.

So screen time will not be reduced. Thus, the use of electricity will not be reduced. And their whole point about Wi-Fi and everything does not stand in this debate today.

I also would like to point that the second speaker conceded that social media was just as addictive, which is exactly what our first speaker had been trying to prove to you in their speech. And therefore, because they conceded this, we believe that we have successfully proven to you why getting rid of gaming--

[bell rings]

--would not get rid of this addiction and would not like help children overall.

So moving on to my substantive, which will prove how in the status quo there was already some level of change that enforces benefits such as time management. And my mechanisms will kind of illustrate what this model will look like. So my first mechanism, I'm sure that students already have an incentive to manage their time. Why?

2 things, firstly, we believe that the majority are already taught by their parents to take education seriously or to at least do their homework so they don't get in large trouble from the school. Because generally, we don't want to get in lots of trouble with the principal and create drama. This is just intuitive.

Secondly, we believe that there's also consequences for actions. And we believe that students have an incentive to at least finish the bare minimum of their work. So in both worlds, we believe that students already have an incentive to manage their time.

However, If the opposition comes up and tells us that these 2 reasons are not enough for children to be motivated to their work, we don't really think that the affirmative can also prove why getting rid of these games will change the attitudes of these students suddenly. And this is their downfall in this debate today.

So my second mechanism will show you how the quality of education stays the same for a child. So imagine a student in school, say Jane, was uninterested in school and bored in class. So removing gaming will not change her attitude at all.

She will still be bored. She will still use other means to procrastinate, whether it be online shopping, browsing social media during class, playing games, or chatting with people around her. They will always procrastinate and always find a way to not pay attention in class. So getting rid of gaming was never going to improve the quality of education that we had in our world today.

So this means that banning games does not change the attitude of people. Banning games does not reduce the quality of education. And the addictiveness of gaming, even if they got rid of it, children would still be addicted to social media and other means, which means that this would be equally harmful.

[bell rings]

And the affirmative team was never able to prove how, in their world, there were exclusive benefits. So therefore, we believe that we are ahead in this debate today. Thank you.

[applause]

BIANCA DYSON: OK. So I'd like to start by talking about something that they haven't really addressed. So our first affirmative speaker has talked about how the result of all this gaming and having this addiction keeping you up at night can give you bad grades. They haven't really addressed this. So this is something that still stands in this debate.

We don't really think that they've come up with a very good solution to gaming, like what is a good alternative, something that will get them hooked and get them doing stuff. They've talked about-- sorry-- they rebutted against us saying that screen time won't be reduced because people are doing so many addictive things like social media, getting on social media and texting friends. Texting friends we don't think is very addictive.

We think that texting friends is a good way to spend your time. We do think that texting friends is a good thing, because you're actually communicating with people you know. Unlike on gaming, where you're communicating with people who you don't necessarily know and where it isn't really necessary.

But I also want to talk about all of the health benefits of actually banning this online gaming during the week days. Like the negative team, we do believe that this isn't going to fully get rid of some really important health issues, such as malnutrition and getting anxiety and depression and different issues from going on social media. But we do believe that this is going to highly reduce the amount of gaming that they do, even though if they do more on the weekends, it's still not to the extent and amount of what they do during the week.

We also believe that it's really important for people to actually get outside, touch some grass, and spend some time with their family and friends instead of being locked up in their room all day doing gaming. And they also talked about how in class they're going to be gaming and doing all these bad things. There are already rules set in place that are stopping them from doing this, such as confiscating a phone if it's being used for games and things that are that aren't really allowed, anyway. So we don't really think this is very effective and necessary in this debate. I don't think that that's a very necessary or relevant point.

And also, we all know that social media has a lot of bad effects, but the knowledge around the danger of online games is less known. So parents would generally be, like, well, yes, sure, you can go do this game, but you can't go on social media because social media is more talked about. We don't think that the dangers of gaming is really talked about much. And we do realise that this is going to happen anyway on weekends, but we believe that this is going to happen less because of our model saying that they can't do this during the week. It won't completely eliminate, but it will still reduce large amounts of gaming and harm that occurs.

And we don't think that they've really talked about a lot of the safety involved, like the safety issues about talking to strangers and things. This can still happen on weekends, sure. But it's going to happen less. This is going to happen less because we are still raising awareness that these things are going to happen.

They also said that, of course, this change, our change isn't going to suddenly change their attitudes towards the world. And they're not going to completely change their minds completely quickly. We never said that it would suddenly change. This is a model that is going to take place. And it will take a lot of time to get this into kids' brains.

[bell rings]

It's going to take a lot of time for this to take place and this change to be effective and get into their minds and have them realise the effectiveness of our model.

And in our world, we do believe that, in a more practical sense, it's a lot more realistic that without the distraction of gaming throughout the week, children will get more homework done and this will further better their grades. And they're going to get more things done. They're going to be walking their dogs, they're going to be spending time with their family and friends more, the things that we believe that children and adults should be valuing.

They haven't really talked about how adults are affected by this as well. Because we do believe that there are these professional gamers who are adults who stream online and things. But we also do believe that is it is, again, important for them to get outside and spend time with their family and friends and do what they value more. They could even get a job, a better, more stable job than gaming online, and have the weekends to do this. Even if they find professional gaming as a side hobby, they can go and do this on the weekends, meaning that they do what is more important more and what is less important less.

And also we don't think that they've really addressed and come up with a proper solution for them to be in dark rooms, looking at bright screens, which has a very negative impact on eyesight. We don't think that they've really come up with a proper solution for this and how this is going to be affecting them later on in life.

And they also said that social media is, like, this much more important problem that we need to look into.

[bell rings]

So, yes, social media is addictive. But we don't think that they've really taken into consideration this huge dopamine and adrenaline rush that gamers get from killing a character in a game or from winning and getting up on the podium as number 1 or in the top 3. We don't really think that they've taken this into consideration of the harms of getting these rushes in their brains that make them feel, like, oh, yes, I've got to do this more and more. And then they have this drive, this determination to keep on doing this.

We don't think that they've really talked about this enough. And we believe that this is a problem. They do get dopamine rushes on the weekends, though. And that is a very important thing to take into consideration as well. But in all these different perspectives, it's important that we realise that this is going to be happening a lot less when our model is implemented. Thank you.

[applause]

LILLIAN KONG: Ladies and gentlemen, the affirmative's biggest mistakes today were firstly at their second speaker, they already conceded that games were not the issue. And it was already at this point that they could never win this debate as their model was not targeting gaming. It was targeting screen time. And this was something that their model could not achieve.

Secondly, they just failed to recognise how they were never going to be banning tech altogether. And at the point where you believe this was true, all of their arguments about addiction, health issues, the electrical, like, economic differences, were never going to stand in this debate. And all of these harms were never mutually exclusive to our side of the house.

Therefore, yeah, I have 2 themes for this debate. Firstly, the effect on these children's health, and secondly, the effect on their school and education. So moving on to my first theme, the main push by the opposition was how gaming affects both mental health and physical health negatively.

So firstly, we think that it is simply unrealistic to say these things, to say that children will be gaming on weekdays long enough and often enough to have these detrimental effects, as my first speaker has already said. And we think that this is true because parents are obviously supervising their children. They give screen time. So these children just cannot game all night. And secondly, they're tired from school and are more likely to sleep, rather than the weekend where, under their model, they would be likely to game more.

And thirdly, because these children just do not have as much time because of school and activities after school. However, secondly, even if we were to believe that there were these harms in the status quo, we think that this characterisation of the affirmative team can be carried to the affirmative world where these kids are so addicted to gaming that, under their model, because of their desperation, they would just turn to social media, carrying on the multitude of harms that they have already said, for example, bad eyes, depression, things like that.

So we think that either the affirmative concedes that they are proposing very exaggerated harms, or they go with their characterisation, which brings these harms onto their case. And we think that this is even worse because of our first analysis on how social media is just more toxic than gaming. And we think that this is much more harmful under their model.

So they also said how violent games would be bad and their model would get rid of these violent games. However, firstly, their model doesn't get rid of this. Obviously, they still have weekends to be able to do these things, so they aren't actually getting rid of violent and toxic environments.

And secondly, we think that parents are likely going to already be aware of these violent video games that their children choose. So we think that it is just better for these parents to have already consented to these games. They know their children the best. We think that it's not that much of a harm for these children to be playing violent video games because it is likely that their parents already are aware and know what their children can do.

So they're setting up the second affirmative speaker has rebutted our case, saying that kids will find loopholes always to play games. And because of this, their harm still stands. However, we have 2 reasons we think that games are one app. And it is way harder to monitor social media. And as we've already proved, kids will turn to social media because they are just so addicted to the internet.

So we think that there are 2 ways why social media is just way worse than these games. We think that it's harder for parents to monitor these because it is just harder to block Chrome and just the internet because kids also use these places for education. And we think that secondly, if they could play internet games, the most addictive games were going to be through apps. We think that internet games are too useless and unoriginal, to be honest, for them to be addicted.

[bell rings]

And the affirmative also thought that communication through social media was going to be better than gaming. However, we have 3 responses to this. Firstly, we don't think that this argument was ever going to be addressed. We're never going to address all the negative influences of social media. We think that social media is not just like these kids chatting. We think that it has many toxic influences, many toxic ideas and opinions which are really harmful.

Secondly, we think that friends don't text all the time because they will obviously get bored of this texting, like the opposition has characterised it. And so they will turn to these more toxic influences, which can be more addicting. Thirdly, we think that it would be better to have this face-to-face social media, which we have proved and mechanised, why it would be possible and more likely on our side of this debate.

So we just think that social media is just worse. And we think that overall on this case, we think that overall the affirmative side of the house has attempted to prove that the status quo has children who are extremely addicted. And we think that because of this characterisation, they kind of have brought their downfall because we just think that these harms carry on to their kids and make their case worse because of social media.

So moving on to my second theme, the opposition's main push was how kids would like get better education under their side because they would get more sleep, more time to study, more attention to school. We think we have a couple of responses to this. Firstly, we think that the opposition needed to recognise that they were never going to completely ban access to technology and the internet.

And my team speakers have already proved to you how this would be already provided, like other parts. And we think that spreading this out, under our model, would just be better for studying, as my first speaker has recognised. Because we think that rather than piling everything onto weekends, which the affirmative has also said would happen, we think that it's better that they time this for themselves, for them to manage their time for themselves. We think that this would also be better for the future.

They also come out with a strange argument that we don't really think is relevant to this debate about benefits about less electricity being used. Firstly, we just don't think that less electricity would be used because this model actually is only going to be targeting like gaming. So we just don't think that this like benefit actually stance.

And 2 things about them saying how money would be used for climate change instead of Wi-Fi. So the first affirmative was never going to give a practical way to implement this plan. So it would have to be actual technology, which requires professional time and money to implement. And we think that it's just not going to stand under their model.

So at the end of this debate, we think that it is better--

[beeping]

[bell rings]

--that the affirmative has never actually given any benefits. And therefore, I [? inaudible ?]

[applause]

MAJA VASIC: I just wanted to start by giving these teams another round of applause. We [? inaudible ?]

[applause]

So all 5 of us thought this was a pretty amazing debate. And it was clear why the teams had got into the grand final. So, again, congratulations to both of you.

I'll start by giving a little bit of general feedback and then stepping through the key issues in the debate. And that will lead me into the decision we made, which was a unanimous decision today.

So in terms of pieces of general feedback for both teams, we had 2 things we wanted to flag. The first thing we wanted to flag was that we felt like teams missed a pretty big part of this topic, which was the impacts that this model might have on adults. So while we thought it was really important how this would affect kids and their health and things like school and that kind of thing, we thought there was a whole big category of stakeholders who might also be affected by this in a lot of different ways. Potentially positively, if they're adults who spend all their weekdays gaming. Potentially negatively, if they're professional gamers who now lose their income, or whatever the case may be.

But we thought that that could have played an important role here today. And the second piece of feedback we wanted to give both teams was that whilst rebuttal is really, really important, it's also important that you spend lots of time building up unique reasons why your side of the topic is correct. That is, if you're affirmative, you want reasons why the topic is uniquely good, and if you're negative, you want reasons why the topic is uniquely bad. We thought that this happened at times in the debate, but we thought that sometimes teams spent too much time sort of trying to shut down and cut out what the other team was saying and not enough time actually going out of their way to prove unique benefits or unique harms that came from this model.

Having said that, we thought this was a really, really high quality debate. So I'll step through what we saw as the key pushes in this debate. I think we hear one really big thing from the affirmative team, which is that gaming is really, really addictive because it gives you a dopamine rush and that kind of thing. And that has a lot of negative impacts.

And they focus on 2 specific categories of impact. The first is impacts to your health. So that involves things like sleep disruptions when you're up all night gaming.

Potentially it's bad for your mental health to be staring at a screen for hours. Potentially gaming lots and lots and lots is going to disrupt your eating patterns. So it's overall bad for your health and well-being if you become addicted to gaming.

And the second thing they tell us is that there are also negative impacts on your education. So, again, if you're distracted or if you're not sleeping enough, you're not going to spend time. You're not going to focus when you're at school, and you're not going to spend time out of school doing things like your homework.

So what do we hear in response to this from the negative team? I think we hear kind of 2 categories of argument and rebuttal from the negative team. The first category is when the negative team diminishes some of the harms that the affirmative team brings up. So they tell us, I think, 3 main things that mitigate the harms that the affirmative team gives us.

The first thing they tell us is the absolute worst harms we hear from the affirmative probably come from other places. That is, they say, eating disorders probably don't come from something like gaming. They might come from feeling like you have to compare yourself to other people. But it's unlikely that gaming results in these absolute worst impacts.

The second thing they tell us is that there are things that happen in the status quo that probably prevent you from reaching these absolute sort of worst impacts again. So, for example, they tell us that your parents are likely to care about you and that means they're likely to do things like monitor your screen time.

And the final thing they tell us is that kids have an incentive not to let their gaming get entirely out of control and not to neglect every other part of their life. And they give us a number of incentives, in particular, why you might care about school and doing your homework. So that's things like you care about your education. That's things like you don't want to get in trouble. That's things like your parents are probably monitoring what you're doing and that kind of thing.

We thought that this was a pretty good part of the negative team's case in that they were able to cut out some of the absolute worst case scenarios that we heard from the affirmative team. But what they did next was more important, which was when they told us that the alternative to this model was actually worse. So that is a model. Sorry, sorry.

Let me reframe that. That's when they told us that this model made things worse than the status quo for 2 key reasons. The first thing they told us was that gaming on weekends, only on weekends was likely to be worse because when you gamed on weekends, you still probably wanted to game as a kid because it was something fun. That both teams kind of agreed.

But on a game, when you were gaming on weekends, you had sort of no interruptions. That is, you didn't have to go to school the next morning. You just had 2 days where you could non-stop be gaming. And that meant that you were taking away from important things that you were particularly likely to do on the weekend, like spending time with your family.

The second thing they tell us is because kids are looking for entertainment, because they come home tired from school, and because screen time is still engaging, you're likely to look for other ways to have fun and sort of fill the gap that is now left when you can't play games after school. And that looks like, they tell us, spending time on social media. And they give us a number of reasons why they think that social media is likely to be worse.

So, for example, we hear at one point that social media is more personally addictive, at the point at which you might have an algorithm giving you content that's specifically catered to you. They tell us that there's lots and lots of harmful content on social media. And we get quite a list of the harmful things you might see, some of the effects of content, all of that sort of thing.

And they also tell us that it's a bit harder for parents to police social media because while you can potentially block a gaming site or choose not to download a gaming app for your child, social media is a bit harder to understand. There's lots of different sites and that kind of thing.

We do get a push back from the affirmative team on this last issue about what's harder for parents to understand and police. But I think the negative team shows us reasonably convincingly that social media is still worse in other ways, that is, things I said, like, lots of harmful influences, like being personally addictive. And what they also show us is that the harms of gaming also apply to social media. So things like blue light, or things like it being bad for your health, and taking time away from homework, and that kind of thing.

So at the end of this debate, where all of this leaves us is, we believe the affirmative team, that gaming could be addictive and have a lot of negative consequences. But what the negative team was able to show us is that if you ban gaming on weekdays, you would get a situation that was just as bad, if not worse. Because kids would be spending their time on social media instead, they'd still be gaming on weekends, and that meant that all of the benefits the affirmative team wanted to claim came from this model didn't really rise. And so for that reason, we gave this debate to the negative team. Congratulations!

[applause]

ABBY PETERSON-HAMPSHIRE: Thank you for that. Now, please welcome a representative from Bellingen High School to congratulate the winners.

[applause]

LAURA MCNEIL: On behalf of my team, I just wanted to congratulate you because this is such a huge achievement. And we just wanted to thank you for really pushing us in this debate. Your arguments were so strong. And we've also really enjoyed getting to know you as people over the last few days as well. So thank you and congratulations.

[applause]

ABBY PETERSON-HAMPSHIRE: Please welcome a member of the winning team to respond.

[applause]

HARSHA SHEORAN: So we wanted to thank the audience, the adjudicators, and most importantly, the opposition today. You gave us a really good debate. And it was really enjoyable.

And it was a big achievement for you guys as well to make it to the state final. And we were really glad to get to know you as people as well. So thank you so much. And we wish you luck in future debates.

[applause]