Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Opposition leader Peter Dutton and state premiers signal support for social media age limits

Anthony Albanese has led a chorus of politicians declaring it time to take “strong action” to protect young Australians from social media harms, throwing his support behind an age limit with “effective” enforcement.

Anthony Albanese has declared it is time to take “strong action” to protect young Australians from social media harms, throwing his support behind an age limit with “effective” enforcement.

The Prime Minister said the federal government wanted to “respond positively” to Australian parents’ pleas for help tackling the issue, which has had “devastating” and “terrible consequences” for the mental health and wellbeing of children and teens.

As the premiers of Australia’s three biggest states come forward in support of tougher regulation around underage access to social media, the Commonwealth is seeking advice about what a feasible and appropriate age ban would look like.

Mr Albanese said in addition to a $6.5 million age verification trial, Labor had already quadrupled funding for the eSafety Commissioner and launched a joint inquiry into the social media giants to examine the issues and ensure “any impediments that are put in place that restrict young people from having access to social media will work”.

“We want to make sure that any measures that are put in place are effective, because one of the concerns is … that age protocols may be circumvented by users at the moment,” he said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says it’s time to tackle age restrictions on social media. Picture: NewsWire

The PM said parents were rightly “worried sick” about what their kids have access to online, and praised the Let Them Be Kids campaign launched on Sunday.

“I think this is an example of the media playing a really positive role on an issue that’s of such concern to parents,” he said.

Currently major social media platforms like Tiktok, Facebook, Instagram and X require users to be at least 13-years-old to create an account.

But there is no legal requirement to enforce the rule and experts have pointed to a wealth of examples of underage users as proof the age limit across all platforms is not policed.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton says it’s ‘difficult’ to make a case for children younger than 16 to be on social media. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Opposition leader Peter Dutton and communications spokesman David Coleman said in a statement the Coalition “strongly supports” age verification for social media.

“We’re seeing deeply disturbing trends in mental health for Australian children – especially girls – and we believe social media is a key part of the problem,” the statement said.

“It is 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.”

Queensland Premier Steven Miles said he supported the age limit for social media to be increased to 14, and “tighter regulation” on access to under 16-year-olds.

“The Australian Government needs to pull the levers available to them to ensure social media companies are action responsibly in our communities,” he said.

Victorian Premier Jacinta Alan said it was “time” minimum age barriers on social media were raised, or that Australia set its own rules.

“Our responsibility is to protect our kids, prepare them for the future,” she said.

NSW Premier Chris Minns said his government was hosting a special summit in October to bring together young people, experts, policy makers and the tech giants to develop a response to growing community concern about the mental health impacts of social media.

Premier of NSW Chris Minns announced a special summit to tackle the issue. Picture: NCA Newswire / Gaye Gerard

“My hope is that this summit will offer a practical way forward, so young people can still enjoy the benefits of technology, while living full, happy lives outside their screens,” he said.

He doubled down on his stance on Monday morning, pointing to the dangers the sites pose to children while suggesting that self harm rates “coincided with the prevalence of social media.”

“The statistics are really troubling, so from 2008 to 2022 rates of self harm doubled for girls between the ages of 15 and 19. And they tripled for children under the age of 14,” he told 2GB’s Ben Fordham on Monday morning.

“And that almost to the day coincided with the prevalence of social media.

“I know a lot of the big social media firms say there’s other reasons for it… it’s garbage. It happened almost to the day that this became ubiquitous in the community.”

NSW Deputy Premier Prue Car joined the calls for age verification on social media. Picture: Tim Hunter.

NSW Deputy Premier Prue Car backed Minns and also called for age verification change.

“It is really realistic to look at age verification in terms of limiting our children’s interaction with social media. I mean, they have some of the best technology in the world, surely they can come to the table with this sort of stuff,” Ms Carr said on Sunrise.

“We need to get all the experts in one place…We are just seeing too many cases where the worst possible thing has occurred because of bullying online.”

Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce said social media can encourage violence and eating disorders amongst younger generations.

He labelled the algorithms used by social media giants as “evil in many cases”.

“We have to do something about them”.

“I think that boys seeing pornography at a really young age and girls being attacked on their weight and being targeted so it encourages eating disorders, both of those, are just wrong.”

Originally published as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Opposition leader Peter Dutton and state premiers signal support for social media age limits