The Australian government has made a public announcement regarding the implementation of a ban on social media usage for children, with a proposed minimum age limit of 16 years.
The nation’s Prime Minister made this revelation on Tuesday, September 10, pledging to encourage children to engage in physical activities rather than excessive screen time.
Federal legislation to address the impact of social media on young people is expected to be introduced this year, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese describing the effects of these platforms as detrimental.
The minimum age requirement for children to access social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok is yet to be determined. However, it is anticipated to fall within the range of 14 to 16 years, as per the statement made by Albanese.
The Prime Minister expressed his personal preference for implementing restrictions on users below the age of sixteen.
Age verification trials are being held over the coming months, the centre-left leader said, though analysts said they doubted it was technically possible to enforce an online age limit.
‘I want to see kids off their devices and onto the footy fields and the swimming pools and the tennis courts,’ 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 is mental health consequences for what many of the young people have had to deal with,’ he said.
Australia’s conservative opposition leader Peter Dutton said he would support an 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,’ he said.
But it is not clear that the technology exists to reliably enforce such bans, said the University of Melbourne’s associate professor in computing and information technology, Toby Murray.
‘We already know that present age verification methods are unreliable, too easy to circumvent, or risk user privacy,’ he said.
Analysts warned that an age limit may not in any case help troubled children.
It ‘threatens to create serious harm by excluding young people from meaningful, healthy participation in the digital world,’ said Daniel Angus, who leads the digital media research centre at Queensland University of Technology.
‘There is logic in establishing boundaries that limit young people’s access,’ said Samantha Schulz, senior sociologist of education at the University of Adelaide.
‘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.’