SYDNEY – Australia will ban children from using social media with a minimum age limit as high as 16, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Sept 10, vowing to get children off their devices and “onto the footy fields”.
Legislation to keep children off social media will be introduced in 2024, Mr Albanese said, describing the impact of the sites on young people as a “scourge”.
The minimum age for children to log into sites such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok has not been decided but is expected to be between 14 and 16, he said, adding that his own preference would be a block on users aged below 16.
An age-verification trial to test various approaches is being conducted over the coming months, the Centre-Left leader said.
“I want to see kids off their devices and onto the footy fields and the swimming pools and the tennis courts,” Mr Albanese said. “We want them to have real experiences with real people because we know that social media is causing social harm,” he told national broadcaster ABC.
“This is a scourge. We know that there are mental health consequences for what many of the young people have had to deal with,” he said.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton said he would support the government’s proposed age limit.
“Every day of delay leaves young kids vulnerable to the harms of social media and the time for relying on tech companies to enforce age limits is over,” he said.
But analysts warned that an age limit may not help troubled kids.
Professor Daniel Angus from the Queensland University of Technology said the government’s plan was “reckless”, coming before the final report of a joint parliamentary inquiry into the impact of social media on Australian society.
“This knee-jerk move undermines the joint inquiry and deliberative democratic principles, and threatens to create serious harm by excluding young people from meaningful, healthy participation in the digital world,” said Prof Angus, who leads the university’s digital media research centre.
The legislation could drive children to “lower-quality online spaces”, he said, “removing an important means of societal connection”.
Associate Professor Toby Murray from the School of Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne said it was not even clear that the technology exists to reliably enforce such bans.
“The government is currently trialling age-assurance technology. But we already know that present age-verification methods are unreliable, too easy to circumvent, or risk user privacy,” he said.
Dr Samantha Schulz, senior sociologist of education at the University of Adelaide, said: “There is logic in establishing boundaries that limit young people’s access... However, young people are not the problem and regulating youth misses the more urgent task of regulating irresponsible social media platforms. Social media is an unavoidable part of young people’s lives.”
Mr Albanese said parents expected a response to online bullying and the access that social media gave to harmful material.
“These social media companies think they’re above everyone,” he told a radio interviewer. “Well, they have a social responsibility and at the moment, they’re not exercising it. And we’re determined to make sure that they do.”
Australia has been at the forefront of global efforts to regulate social media platforms, with its online safety watchdog bumping heads notably with billionaire Elon Musk’s X over the content that the platform carries. AFP
