Anti-social network: Locals fear Meta is fuelling Port Augusta’s youth crime crisis

Youth crime has been a constant fixture in a regional South Australian town. Now locals are calling for one group show some responsibility.

Children in the state’s youth crime capital are organising fights to film and share on social media to gain “notoriety”, sparking police concerns about the online dissemination of videos showing violence being committed.

Concerns have also been raised that social media giant Meta – which owns Facebook and Instagram – does little to stop the spreading of illegal content on its platforms, giving youths in Port Augusta extra incentive to boast about their crimes.

Several videos of school fights and mass street brawls in the regional town have been filmed and shared on social media in the past two years amid an ongoing spate of crime and anti-social behaviour.

Locals believe Meta’s lack of policing of what content can be posted and shared on its platforms is driving the violence.

“Social media stirs a lot of it up,” Port Augusta Youth Centre manager Dave Hickman said.

Children in Port Augusta are organising fights to film and share on social media to gain “notoriety”. Picture: Brett Hartwig

Mr Hickman, who sees first-hand the levels of youth crime in Port Augusta, believed violence would drastically reduce if tighter restrictions were in place on the platforms.

“They shouldn’t allow that sort of content,” Mr Hickman said.

“Things need to change.”

One 16-year-old boy said teens shared videos of fights and crime being committed to social media to become “famous” and impress other youths.

“They like to film it because that’s a bit of notoriety,” Deb Hazelwood, the youth centre’s program director, said.

“They’ll come here and brag.”

Ms Hazelwood said if children weren’t able to share footage of crimes being committed, they would be less likely to break the law.

“I really think that’s what a lot of that is,” she said.

Port Augusta Youth Centre manger Dave Hickman said Meta needed to ban violent content and footage encouraging youth crime from its platforms. Picture: Brett Hartwig

Education Minister Blair Boyer said since mobile phones had been banned in schools violent incidents had significantly reduced.

“Our students were being very much encouraged or motivated by that to create their own content and unfortunately the footage of people fighting, whether it’s kids at school or elsewhere, is the stuff that seems to perform very well on social media platforms,” Mr Boyer said.

“One of the most startling things that I have observed is the number of videos we see of violent incidents at schools where, particularly before the mobile phone ban, there were multiple other students standing around recording it and cheering it on.”

Mr Boyer said in some instances he believed the fights were occurring purely to be posted to social media.

“It became very clear to me, obviously not in all cases but in a lot of cases, other students were egging on the assailant because they wanted to capture footage of the fight that they could upload to social media because it performs so well on social media,” he said.

Several videos of school fights in Port Augusta have been circulated on social media. Picture: Supplied

Mr Boyer said after footage of a fight was circulated on social media, he contacted Meta on behalf of the victim, who was left traumatised by the incident, asking for the video to be taken down.

“They didn’t feel they could leave the bedroom or the house because they knew that everybody they were going to see had seen the fight, which was online and circulating everywhere and they felt that deep sense of shame,” Mr Boyer said.

He said it took repeated requests for the video to be removed.

“We couldn’t get a response from them just to take it down and it was the victim asking for it to be removed and it took days and days if not weeks longer than it should have,” he said.

“There is absolutely no questioning the nature of what happens in the video because it’s there in horrible high definition for everyone to see – one person being violently assaulted by another – yet it still takes an extraordinarily long amount of time for the platform to pull it down even when the approaches are made by the victim and the victims’ parents.

“What more do you need to actually pull this stuff down?

“We don’t find that social media platforms are very responsive.”

Education Minister Blair Boyer said he had pleaded with social media giant Meta for weeks to remove a fight video on behalf of the victim involved. Picture: NCA NewsWire/David Mariuz

A Meta spokeswoman said the company had rules outlining what content was permitted on Facebook and Instagram.

“Our policies prohibit people from engaging in criminal activity or publicising crime and we will remove this content as soon as we become aware,” she said.

She said the company had contacted Mr Boyer to discuss the issues raised.

An SA Police spokeswoman said while footage of crimes being committed circulating on social media did not necessarily represent an increase, it was a concern for police.

“The nature of some of these crimes and recirculation of footage can give the public an unrealistic perception of the instances of crime,” she said.

“Generally, youth record much of their daily life through social media, but the distribution of videos of the instances of crime is a concern.”

She said sharing of the content could “encourage others to commit similar crimes and can have significant impact on victims depending on the nature of the offending”.

“Reports of criminal activity on social media present challenges for police during investigations, such as the time and location of any offences, ages and level of consent of people involved,” she said.

“SAPOL regularly engage with social media platforms about the removal of inappropriate content.”