Governments across Australia want to explore banning social media for some young people to protect them from harmful content and the negative impacts of excessive time online.
The premiers of New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and South Australia are united in a push to lift age minimums on tech platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, after a campaign from News Corp publications.
As it stands, platforms require users to be 13 to create an account but sign-up systems can often be circumvented.
While many experts have added their voices to calls for better regulation of social media and warned of its dangers to young minds, few see how such a ban could be implemented in a safe way that ensures data and personal privacy.
What do different states and territories want to do?
The NSW premier, Chris Minns, believes 16 would be the right age limit for social media, while the Queensland premier, Steven Miles, has this week floated 14.
“There’ll be a lot of 16-year-olds where that isn’t old enough, to be honest with you, when you consider what you’re exposed to as a result of being on social media,” Minns said on Monday.
Despite calling for a change to the laws, the premier said he was unsure if that was “enforceable at the state level” and would prefer if the whole country acted together.
He announced that the state would hold a social media summit this year to discuss how to protect children and teens from online harm.
The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, also wants Australia to take a national response to social media, which she said was making antisemitism, racism and gender-based violence worse.
“We need to hold these global social media giants to a better standard,” she said.
“Social media platforms already set minimum age barriers, it’s time these were raised, or time Australia sets its own because social media isn’t going anywhere.”
This month the South Australian premier, Peter Malinauskas, announced his state could look into social media bans for people aged under 14 and parental permission for under-16s.
What has the federal government had to say?
At the weekend the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said he wanted “strong action” and that it needed to be effective and not rushed.
“We want to respond positively to the request from parents that we do something about this,” he said.
“This is a national issue. We want to make sure that any measures that are put in place are effective, because one of the concerns which is there is that age protocols may be circumvented by users at the moment.”
The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, says the Coalition strongly supported age verification for social media.
“It’s difficult to make the case for children under the age of 16 being on social media, especially when we’ve seen the harmful effects that it can have on our children,” he says.
Does it need to be done nationally?
Despite a handful of premiers saying their states could go it alone, some experts believe any changes to age verification systems would need to be done at the national level.
The Swinburne University senior lecturer in media Dr Belinda Barnet says state-based geo-located blocks would prove incredibly difficult, if not impossible.
“It would make a lot more sense if it was a national decision, but I’ve got some reservations,” she says, flagging it would require legislative changes in Canberra that the tech giants would then need to implement.
The opposition communications spokesperson, David Coleman, says while it is “good” to see the premiers calling for action, age verification change is a federal issue.
“What’s happening now is completely unacceptable and age verification is the way to address it,” he says.
“It’s very clear this is a commonwealth power, so we need the commonwealth to act.”
Could it and should it be done?
The other major question is if it would be possible to implement a system that users could not circumnavigate and that did not put personal data at risk.
The federal government this month pledged $6.5m for an age assurance trial. It will assess the effectiveness of the technologies designed to verify the ages of social media users. An age verification trial was recommended by the eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, in March last year.
Barnet is concerned a policy change could lead to Australians handing over sensitive documents to platforms to prove their age.
“We need a third-party solution mainly because it’s a really bad idea to give identity documents to any of the platforms,” she says. “They’re just the wrong custodians for that sensitive information.”
She says there are also privacy concerns if people are no longer able to use social media anonymously.
The Digital Rights Watch head of policy, Samantha Floreani, says children and young people need to be able to take part in modern life, which is happening online, and warns against creating additional harm while attempting to reduce it.
“Attempting to prevent young people up to the age of 16 from accessing social media entirely is not an appropriate or proportionate solution to issues related to online harm and is likely to run into serious implementation and workability issues,” she says.
“Plenty of young people rely upon social media to express themselves, form communities and find support, and banning them may have significant negative consequences.”
Floreani also holds concerns about the risk to privacy.
“Most social media sites already require a user to be over 13 to register an account – although this obviously does not function very well,” she says.
“In order to enforce it more strongly, platforms would need to implement more strict age verification processes, which would likely raise serious privacy risks.”
How have the platforms responded?
TikTok has insisted that the safety of younger users is a top priority, noting that accounts of people using the app that are registered as being under 16 are automatically set to private.
“[This] limits who can follow the account, view their videos, read their bio, and interact with their videos,” a spokesperson says.
“We also have a Family Pairing feature that allows adults to link their TikTok account with their teen’s account. This gives them control over the teen’s account settings, including how much time they can spend online, and the type of content they can see.”
Meta has been contacted for comment.
