Australian kids will be blocked from social media until a certain age under a national plan to target growing concerns around its impacts on young minds.
The Albanese government will tomorrow commit to introducing legislation on a social media age limit, following similar announcements from Victoria and South Australia.
Some have compared potential restrictions on the technology to cigarettes and alcohol as more evidence emerges about harm to children.
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Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the government was listening to parents’ concerns and determined to take the right approach.
“We know that technology moves fast. No Government is going to be able to protect every child from every threat – but we have to do all we can,” he said.
“Parents are worried sick about this. We know they’re working without a map – no generation has faced this challenge before.”
No age limit has been set but the government believes age assurance technology it’s trialling could be used to set one between 13 and 16. Most big social media companies don’t let children under 13 sign up but the restrictions are trivial to get around.
The government said the legislation would be worked on in national cabinet and draw on a report by former High Court Chief Justice Robert French commissioned by the SA government and released yesterday.
“The safety and mental and physical health of our young people is paramount,” Albanese said.
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“Parents want their kids off their phones and on the footy field. So do I.
“We are taking this action because enough is enough.”
SA Premier Peter Malinauskas raised the issue at a national cabinet meeting last week before announcing his state’s proposal and federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton earlier this year called for bipartisan support to introduce an age limit.
“It’s inconceivable you would allow your 13-year-old to go down to a park and start mingling with any random person who comes by, or you would have a magazine on the table with all sorts of explicit content in it and you would allow your kid to flick through that content,” Dutton said at a press conference in June.
“There’s a lot we can do and the technology is trending in our favour to make sure we can deal with the scale of the problem.”
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Malinauskas tonight promised to work closely with the federal government to implement the ban.
“The evidence shows early access to addictive social media is causing our kids harm,” he said.
“This is no different to cigarettes or alcohol. When a product or service hurts children, governments must act.”
Labor committed $6.5 million in the budget to trial age verification technology, which it believes could be used to limit social media use or block children from online pornography.
Testing of the actual tech is due to begin this week after research by the Australian Institute of Family Studies and consultation with parents, young people, the platforms themselves and academics.
It’s unclear how the government would enforce the age limits but experts have suggested self-reporting, parental consent and estimating users’ age based on their appearance or behaviour are all possible solutions.
“Unfortunately, many of these approaches raise significant privacy concerns for users, not least because a third party (such as the social media company) would be handling their ID documents and other personal data,” RMIT University Professor of Information Sciences Lisa M Given wrote in The Conversation earlier this year.
“While government-issued digital IDs may offer secure alternatives for age verification, many people may not hold passports, driver’s licenses, or other types of ‘hard’ documentation required for these services.”
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