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Australia plans to implement age limit to ban children from social media

Australia plans to implement age limit to ban children from social media

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Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced plans to introduce a minimum age limit for children to use social media, citing concerns about mental and physical health. The proposed age limit is expected to be between 14 and 16 years old, with an age verification trial to be conducted before introducing the law. This measure aims to reduce the negative impact of social media on young people, but digital rights advocates warn that it could drive online activity underground.

Anthony Albanese
Australian Government
1. We are taking this action because enough is enough.
2. This is a scourge. We know that there is mental health consequences for what many of the young people have had to deal with.
3. I want to see kids off their devices and onto the footy fields and the swimming pools and the tennis courts.
4. These social media companies think they're above everyone.
5. 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.
Michelle Rowland
Labor Party
1. We are also holding big tech accountable because platforms and online services have a key responsibility for the safety of their users. We will continue to engage experts, young people, advocates, and parents through the age assurance trial, which is an important aspect of this journey.
2. As a mother of young daughters and Minister for Communications, I fully understand concerns around harmful online environments and addictive social media behavior in children.
Peter Dutton
Liberal Party
1. 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.
Julie Inman Grant
eSafety
1. This may mean that they access social media without adequate protections in place and are more likely to use less regulated non-mainstream services that increase their likelihood of exposure to serious risks.
Daniel Angus
Queensland University of Technology
1. It also means that very large online platforms are going to be let off the hook in making necessary reforms to the quality of content on their platforms, as this simply places a gate at the door rather than improving what's on the other side.
2. No doubt this populist policy will sell well with the older demographics, but it's a misguided distraction from the necessary structural reforms that would provide long term benefit to youth in this country.
3. This knee-jerk move ... threatens to create serious harm by excluding young people from meaningful, healthy participation in the digital world, potentially driving them to lower quality online spaces.
Lisa Given
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
1. What Australia is looking for is a bit of a simple fix or a simple answer to what is really a very complex question.
2. Particularly kids in regional or remote areas. They may not even have ready access to a library nearby. They may be home-schooled.
Toby Murray
University of Melbourne
1. The government is currently trialling age assurance technology. But we already know that present age verification methods are unreliable, too easy to circumvent, or risk user privacy.