eSafety Commission recommends YouTube be removed from social media ban exemption draft rules exempting
New advice has raised concerns about harms on the popular video-sharing platform, which is not subject to the social media ban on users under 16.
NSW
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YouTube’s carve out from Australia’s landmark social media ban on users under 16 would be scrapped under a push from eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant.
Her advice on the draft rules, sent to Communications Minister Anika Wells last week, comes as a new survey of Australian kids reveals YouTube is the most frequently cited platform for harmful content.
Ms Inman Grant, who will address the National Press Club on Tuesday, acknowledges that the popular video-sharing platform has “many educational and otherwise beneficial uses”.
But she says eSafety Commission evidence shows that children are experiencing the types of harms on YouTube that the social media minimum age obligation seeks to curb.
“Given the known risk of harms on YouTube, the similarity of its functionality to other online services, and without sufficient evidence demonstrating that YouTube predominantly provides beneficial experiences for children under 16, providing a specific carve out for YouTube appears to be inconsistent with the purpose of the Act,” the advice states.
“Recent findings from the Black Dog Institute showed an association between higher daily hours spent using YouTube and greater symptoms of depression, anxiety, and insomnia.
“YouTube currently employs persuasive design features and functionality that may be associated with harms to health, including those which may contribute to unwanted or excessive use such as infinite scroll, auto-play.”
The federal government last year announced that Snapchat, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X would all be forced to prevent users under 16 from accessing their platforms under the tough new social media laws.
But Facebook Messenger Kids, WhatsApp and YouTube were set to be exempt from the age restriction bans, prompting uproar from YouTube’s competitors.
Ms Inman Grant acknowledged that YouTube offered supervised accounts for children, where parents could set viewing restrictions based on “age-appropriateness”.
She said the safety implications of applying the ban would “be mixed”, with children still able to access YouTube without holding an account, but reinforced the importance of online safety education.
Other proposed changes to the draft rules include considering the risk level of platforms, avoiding naming specific platforms, monitoring the “migration of children and harms” to services which have carve outs during the implementation and introducing further rules to address any issues.
Ms Wells will now assess the advice over the coming weeks before making a decision about whether the video-sharing platform will receive a carve-out.
In her speech to the National Press Club, Ms Inman Grant will say that an eSafety survey of kids aged 10 to 15 revealed that around seven in 10 kids reported being exposed to harmful online content including misogynistic or hateful material, dangerous online challenges, violent fight videos, or disordered eating.
“YouTube was the most frequently cited platform in our research, with almost 4 in 10 children reporting exposure to harmful content there,” she is expected to say.
The Commissioner will also raise concerns about the peril of artificial intelligence, with kids as young as 10 spending up to five hours a day chatting with sexualised chatbots, and creating deepfake pornographic images via free nudifying smartphone apps.
The social media ban came after News Corp’s Let Them Be Kids campaign, calling on politicians to back raising the minimum age of social media to 16 based on the advice of health, wellbeing, tech and psychology experts.
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Originally published as eSafety Commission recommends YouTube be removed from social media ban exemption draft rules exempting
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