Athira Sethu
Kochi, 7 November 2024
Australia wants a new law that would limit social media use for young children below the age of 16 years. Australia is piloting a version of an age verification system which could block children from online access to platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, news reports said.
The policy might be enforced as early as next year, considered one of the most drastic measures to be applied by any country in the world to safeguard young minds.
The plan was declared by the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, in a press conference, where he claimed that it planned to move forward because social media harms kids. According to him, the dangers of too much social media usage are doing damage to both the physical and mental health of children, especially. For instance, girls are liable to suffer from body image problems, while boys face exposure to misogynistic content. According to Albanese, social media can be quite destructive for teens at critical phases of growth and transition.
“We listen to our concerns and act upon them,” Albanese said. He further stated that the government is committed to protecting children and making cyberspace safer for them.
The proposed ban will be on children below 16 years. There will be no exemption for kids with parental permission or who already have accounts, he said. The onus will be on the platforms and not parents or children to ensure the young ones do not gain access to social media. This consequently involves an act of reasonable steps by the social media companies to keep children away from their services. This may impact platforms such as Meta (Instagram and Facebook), TikTok, X(formerly Twitter), and YouTube.
This move forms part of a global push to control children’s use of social media. As many countries have introduced policies to limit the online activity of young people, this is one of the toughest plans that Australia has come up with. Last year, France proposed banning social media from children below 15 years old, though parents could still give consent for their children to use it. In the United States, children under 13 years of age have been prohibited from using social media unless they get permission from their parents, though many platforms already block access to kids under that age.
This legislation is expected to be introduced to the parliament soon, and will become effective by the end of 2025.
