Australia’s plan to ban children from social media is proving popular and problematic

MELBOURNE – How do you protect children from the harm of social media? Politically, the answer seems simple in Australia, but in practice the solution could be much more difficult.

The Australian government’s plan to… ban children from social media platforms such as X, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram are politically popular until their 16th birthday. The opposition party says it would have done the same after winning elections within months if the government had not acted first.

The leaders of them all eight Australian states and mainland territories have unanimously supported the plan, although Tasmania, the smallest state, would have preferred the threshold to be set at 14.

But a group of technology and child welfare experts have responded with alarm. More than 140 such experts signed one open letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese who condemns the age limit of 16 as ‘too blunt an instrument to effectively tackle risks’.

Details on what is proposed and how it will be implemented are scarce. More will be known when the legislation is introduced into Parliament next week.

The worried teenager

Leo Puglisi, a 17-year-old Melbourne student who founded the online streaming service 6 News Australia at the age of 11, laments that lawmakers imposing the ban lack the perspective on social media that young people have gained from growing up in the digital age .

“As far as the government and the Prime Minister are concerned, they didn’t grow up in the age of social media, they didn’t grow up in the age of social media, and what a lot of people here don’t understand is that, like it Or not, social media are part of people’s daily lives,” says Leo.

“It’s part of their community, it’s part of work, it’s part of entertainment, it’s where they watch content – ​​young people don’t listen to the radio, read newspapers or watch free TV – and so it cannot be ignored. The reality is that this ban, if implemented, will be nothing more than a young person taking to social media,” Leo added.

Leo is praised online for his work. He was a finalist in his home state Victoria’s nomination for the Young Australian of the Year prize, which will be announced in January. His nomination bid credits his platform with “fostering a new generation of informed, critical thinkers.”

The grieving mother turned activist

One of the bill’s proponents, cybersecurity activist Sonya Ryan, knows from personal tragedy how dangerous social media can be for children.

Her 15-year-old daughter Carly Ryan was murdered in South Australia in 2007 by a 50-year-old pedophile who posed as a teenager online. In a grim milestone of the digital age, Carly became the first person in Australia to be killed by an online predator.

“Children are exposed to harmful pornography, they are fed misinformation, there are body image issues, there is sextortion, online predators, bullying. There are so many different types of harm to try to manage and kids just don’t have the skills or life experience to deal with that properly,” said Sonya Ryan.

‘The result is that we lose our children. Not only what happened to Carly, predatory behavior, but we are also seeing an alarming increase in youth suicide,” she added.

Sonya Ryan is part of a group advising the government on a national strategy to prevent and respond to child sexual abuse in Australia.

She strongly supports Australia setting the age limit for social media at 16 years.

“We’re not going to get this perfect,” she said. “We need to make sure there are mechanisms in place to deal with what we already have, which is an anxious generation and a generation of children addicted to social media.”

A major concern for social media users of all ages is the potential impact of the legislation on privacy.

Age estimation technology has proven to be inaccurate, so digital identification seems the most likely option to ensure a user is at least 16 years old.

Australia eSafety Commissioner, an agency that describes itself as the world’s first government agency committed to keeping people safer online has proposed taking on the role of authenticator in document planning. The government would store the identity data and the platforms would discover through the commissioner whether a potential account holder was 16.

The skeptical internet expert

Tama Leaver, professor of internet studies at Curtin University, fears the government will instead let the platforms keep users’ identifying information.

The government has already said that the responsibility will lie with the platforms, and not the children or their parents, to ensure that everyone meets the age limit.

“The worst possible outcome appears to be the one that the government could inadvertently strive for, which is that the social media platforms themselves would end up being the arbiters of identity,” Leaver said.

“They would be the holders of identity documents, which would be absolutely terrible because they have a pretty poor track record so far when it comes to keeping personal data properly,” he added.

Once the legislation becomes law, the platforms will have a year to figure out how to implement the ban.

Ryan, who splits her time between Adelaide in South Australia and Fort Worth, Texas, says privacy concerns should not stand in the way of removing children from social media.

“What are the costs if we don’t do that? If we don’t put the safety of our children above profit and privacy?” she asked.

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This story corrects that Leo Puglisi was a finalist but not the nominee for Young Australian of the Year.