Australia Plans a Social Media Ban for Children Under 16

According to the government, children whose parents allow of their usage of social media sites would not be exempt from the proposed law. Additionally, “grandfathering arrangements” that would exempt young individuals who already have social accounts would not be included in the measure.

Michelle Rowland, the Australian minister of communications, informed reporters that social media companies had been engaged regarding the practical implementation of such a ban. She named YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X as sites that would probably be impacted by the law.

In a statement, Facebook’s parent company, Meta, stated that it has already developed a number of safety resources for teenagers using its services.

“There’s a solution that negates many of these concerns and simplifies things immeasurably for parents: parental consent and age verification should happen on the app store. And we think Australia should make it law,” the company said.

More than 140 Australian and foreign professionals expressed their worries about the proposed age limit in an open letter to Albanese last month.
“The online world is a place where children and young people access information, build social and technical skills, connect with family and friends, learn about the world around them and relax and play,” the letter says. “We are concerned that a ‘ban’ is too blunt an instrument to address risks effectively.”

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators, including Democrat Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Republican Ted Cruz of Texas, introduced legislation in April that would, among other things, “prohibit social media companies from using algorithms to recommend content to users under the age of 17″ and “prohibit children under the age of 13 from creating or maintaining social media accounts, consistent with the current practices of major social media companies.”

According to the U.S. Surgeon General’s office’s 2023 advisory, children and teenagers who limit or stop using social media for more than a month see improvements in their mental health.

Although the majority of social media firms have regulations prohibiting children under the age of 13 from creating accounts, a 2022 research by the UK’s media oversight, Ofcom, revealed that by the time they were 12, almost 80% of children in the nation had social media accounts.

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