Australia Has Barred Everyone Under 16 From Social Media. Will It Work?
The law sets a minimum age for users of platforms like TikTok, Instagram and X. How the restriction will be enforced online remains an open question.
In Melbourne on Wednesday. Australia passed a social media ban for children despite feasibility concerns.Credit...William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Australia has imposed a sweeping ban on social media for children under 16, one of the world’s most comprehensive measures aimed at safeguarding young people from potential hazards online. But many details were still unclear, such as how it will be enforced and what platforms will be covered.
After sailing through Parliament’s lower house on Wednesday, the bill passed the Senate on Thursday with bipartisan support. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said that it puts Australia at the vanguard of efforts to protect the mental health and well-being of children from detrimental effects of social media, such as online hate or bullying.
The law, he has said, puts the onus on social media platforms to take “reasonable steps” to prevent anyone under 16 from having an account. Corporations could be fined up to 49.5 million Australian dollars (about $32 million) for “systemic” failures to implement age requirements.
Neither underage users nor their parents will face punishment for violations. And whether children find ways to get past the restrictions is beside the point, Mr. Albanese said.
“We know some kids will find workarounds, but we’re sending a message to social media companies to clean up their act,” he said in a statement this month.
As with many countries’ regulations on alcohol or tobacco, the law will create a new category of “age-restricted social media platforms” accessible only to those 16 and older. How that digital carding will happen, though, is a tricky question.
The law specifies that users will not be forced to provide government identification as part of the verification process, a measure that the conservative opposition said was included after they raised concerns about privacy rights.
It is also not clear exactly which platforms will be covered by the ban. The prime minister has said that Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram and X will be included, but YouTube and messaging apps including WhatsApp are expected to be exempt.
France last year passed a law requiring parental consent for social media users under 15, and it has been pushing for similar measures across the European Union. Florida this year imposed a ban for users under 14 and required parental consent for 14- and 15-year-olds, but that law could face constitutional challenges.
Leo Puglisi, a 17-year-old Australian teenager who runs a news site, 6 News, that is staffed mostly by teens, said he had full confidence that his 14-year-old brother would easily find a way to circumvent any restriction.
He described social media as an integral part of growing up today. He and his contemporaries are aware that it can cause harm, but they rely on it to find communities of people with similar interests, he said.
A blanket ban would do little to counteract the dangers of the platforms, he said.
“None of the harmful content would be removed. It just kicks the can down the road and throws you into the deep end at 16,” he said. “It might sound good on paper, but in reality it’s not practical.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in Canberra this month.Credit...Mick Tsikas/AAP Image, via Reuters
But Dany Elachi, who has five children between the ages of 7 and 15, said the law would help to change the norms around social media usage. Many parents concerned about its harmful effects feel they have no choice but to let their children use it so they don’t feel left out.
“When you think your child might be isolated, that’s what puts parents under a lot of pressure,” said Mr. Elachi, co-founder of the Heads Up Alliance, a network of parents who are trying to delay their children’s use of social media and smartphones. “If everybody misses out, no one misses out.”
Kylea Tink, an independent lawmaker representing North Sydney, criticized the bill in the debate in the lower house on Tuesday as a “blunt instrument.” She said the law would stop short of holding social media companies accountable for the safety of the product they are providing.
“They are not fixing the potholes; they are just telling our kids there won’t be any cars,” she said.
During the same debate, Stephen Bates of the Australian Greens party cited his experience as a 13-year-old addicted to the video game “The Sims.” His father installed a program so his computer would automatically shut down after an hour, he recalled.
“It took me 10 minutes to figure out how to get around that,” said Mr. Bates, now a 32-year-old lawmaker. “As the youngest person in this chamber and one of very, very few people in this place who grew up with this technology and with social media, I can say that change is needed but this bill is not it.”
Now that the law has passed, social media companies have a 12-month period to meet the requirements. The task of sorting out the details of its implementation will fall to Julie Inman Grant, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner.
She said the technologies behind age verification were rapidly advancing, arising from past efforts to limit underage exposure to pornography or gambling sites. A trial commissioned by the Australian government is underway to test them.
In an interview, she said she had no doubt that tech giants would find a way to comply.
“They’ve got financial resources, technologies and some of the best brainpower,” she said. “If they can target you for advertising, they can use the same technology and know-how to identify and verify the age of a child.”
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How Australia Will (or Won’t) Keep Children Off Social Media
Critics say big questions remain not only about how the new law will be enforced, but also about whether the ban will really protect young people.
The Australian government has called the legislation a “world leading” move to protect young people online.Credit...David Gray/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Australia has passed a law to prevent children under 16 from creating accounts on social media platforms.
The bill, which the government calls a “world leading” move to protect young people online, was approved in the Senate on Thursday with support from both of the country’s major parties. The lower house of Parliament had passed it earlier in the week.
“This is about protecting young people — not punishing or isolating them,” said Michelle Rowland, Australia’s communications minister. She cited exposure to content about drug abuse, eating disorders and violence as some of the harms children can encounter online.
The legislation has broad support among Australians, and some parental groups have been vocal advocates. But it has faced backlash from an unlikely alliance of tech giants, human rights groups and social media experts.
Critics say there are major unanswered questions about how the law will be enforced, how users’ privacy will be protected and, fundamentally, whether the ban will actually protect children.
What’s in the law?
The law requires social media platforms to take “reasonable steps” to verify the age of users and prohibit those under 16 from opening accounts.
It does not specify which platforms the ban will cover — that will be decided later — but the government has named TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, Instagram and X as sites it is likely to include.
Three broad categories of platforms will be exempt: messaging apps (like WhatsApp and Facebook’s Messenger Kids); gaming platforms; and services that provide educational content, including YouTube. Those 15 and under will also still be able to access platforms that let users see some content without registering for an account, like TikTok, Facebook and Reddit.
Ms. Rowland, the communications minister, said the restriction on creating accounts, rather than on content more broadly, would mitigate harms associated with online life — like “persistent notifications and alerts” that could affect young people’s sleep and ability to focus — while limiting the law’s effect on the broader population. And supporters of the ban say that delaying children’s exposure to the many pressures of social media would allow them the time to develop a more “secure identity,” while taking pressure off parents to police their children’s online activity.
But digital media experts and some parental groups have said that the patchwork nature of which platforms will and won’t be included in the ban makes it unclear what exactly it is meant to protect children from.
A more effective approach would be to address the problem at its root by requiring social media companies to do a better job of moderating and removing harmful content, said Lisa Given, a professor of information sciences at RMIT University in Melbourne.
The new law “does not protect children against potential harms on social media,” Professor Given said. “In fact, it could create other problems by excluding young people from helpful and useful information, as well as opening up a number of privacy concerns for all Australians.”
How will it be enforced?
That’s not yet entirely clear. The bill states that social media companies must take reasonable steps to assess users’ ages, but the platforms are left to decide how to do that. Those that don’t comply could be fined up to 49.5 million Australian dollars (about $32 million).
In a measure that was added in response to privacy concerns, the law states that providing a government-issued identity document cannot be the only option social media platforms give users for verifying their age.
Other methods the government has suggested include so-called age assurance technologies, like using a facial scan to determine a user’s approximate age, or estimating it based on online behavior.
Some of those technologies are already being tried. Facebook, for example, is teaching A.I. to estimate users’ ages by looking at things like the birthday messages they receive. The Australian government is conducting its own trial of such tools, and the results will inform how it defines the “reasonable steps” that social media platforms must take.
But Daniel Angus, the director of the Digital Media Research Centre at the Queensland University of Technology, said it was unrealistic for the government to base its law, even in part, on that kind of technology, which is often driven by A.I., largely still in development and in no way foolproof. He added that “there are huge, huge privacy concerns around these, huge tracking concerns. All of this allows, in some way, the ability to track users online.”
What has the response been?
Polls show that the majority of Australians favor the ban. Parental groups have been broadly supportive — although some say the law does not go far enough and should cover more platforms.
Some parents who blame social media for their children’s deaths have been particularly vocal campaigners for a ban, such as Kelly O’Brien, who said that her 12-year-old daughter, Charlotte, died by suicide after experiencing bullying on and off social media.
“Giving our kids these phones, we’re giving them weapons, we’re giving them the world at their fingertips,” Ms. O’Brien told an Australian news outlet.
Social media companies have criticized the law. Elon Musk, the owner of X, said on the platform that it “seems like a backdoor way to control access to the internet by all Australians.”
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said the proposal “overlooks the practical reality of age assurance technology, as well as the views of a majority of mental health and youth safety organizations in the country.”
(LinkedIn argued that it should not fall within the scope of the ban because, in part, it “simply does not have content interesting and appealing to minors.”)
Some commentators have described the ban as performative. “The primary use of this legislation — let’s not pretend otherwise — is to make it look like our Parliament is taking a stand,” Annabel Crabb, a top journalist at Australia’s national broadcaster, wrote.
Human rights groups have also raised concerns.
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С завистью и понятными ожиданиями, Dimitriy.
