‘Ban all social media for kids’: US lawmakers’ urge to Australian government

Key figures behind new social media bans in the US have urged the Australian government to go even further than America has to protect children.

Exclusive: The architects of nation-leading social media restrictions in the US have urged the Australian government to enact the toughest possible laws to keep kids off the harmful platforms.

In a major intervention, key figures in Utah’s first-in-the-nation rules and Florida’s ambitious crackdown urged Australia to go even further by banning social media for children under 16.

But they warned the government to prepare for a bruising legal battle to defend any reforms, with the platforms already fighting a flood of new laws across the US that could slash the $US11bn (A$16.4bn) they make from kids in advertising revenue.

A growing number of US states have rushed to take action as the country’s Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warned social media was driving a youth mental health crisis.

It is used by 95 per cent of Americans aged 13 to 17 and nearly 40 per cent of those aged 8 to 12, even though 13 is the minimum age under federal law. Most adolescents are online at least three hours a day, which doubles their risk of suffering depression and anxiety.

Utah was the first to act last year, banning social media for users under 18 unless they had parental consent, while requiring the platforms to verify the ages of all account holders.

The state has since had to overhaul its crackdown, with Republican House representative Jordan Teuscher saying the platforms “tried to kill this thing”.

News Corp and Australian parents are calling on the federal government to raise the age limit at which children can access social media to 16 as part of a national campaign, Let Them Be Kids, to stop the scourge of social media.

Let Them Be Kids: SIGN THE PETITION

Utah representative Jordan Teuscher. Picture: Supplied

Under laws that come into effect in October, social media companies will instead have to ensure 95 per cent accuracy in their age assurance processes so that minors under 13 are not using their platforms.

In March, Florida banned social media for children under the age of 14 and forced the platforms to obtain parental consent for users aged 14 and 15, in what House Speaker Paul Renner said was the most important legislation he had delivered in his decade-long career.

“We’ve realised how catastrophic this has been to an entire generation,” Mr Renner said.

“We’ve conducted an unregulated experiment on a group of children that has had tragic results, and we needed to do something about it.”

Both lawmakers pointed to data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention which showed 57 per cent of American teenage girls felt persistently sad or hopeless – double the level among boys – and 30 per cent had seriously considered attempting suicide.

They also cited the links between social media and body image issues, poor sleep, hateful content and predatory behaviour.

Florida House Speaker Paul Renner. Picture: Supplied

Mr Teuscher said that with “staggering” evidence about the harm caused by social media, Australia should “do as much as you possibly can to keep minors off these platforms”.

“Right now, we don’t think that with the way our laws are structured … that we could do an all-out ban at a certain age,” he said.

“But if that were allowed under the Australian constitution, I would think banning all use of social media for those under 16 makes a lot of sense.”

Mr Renner agreed, saying children under 16 were not allowed to drive or smoke or drink, and that social media was “more dangerous than all of those things”.

“It’s devastating for our children who don’t realise the addiction and can’t step away from the harm it causes … They don’t know that they’re being cooked one degree at a time, like the frog in the petri dish,” he said.

“I would encourage Australians to really, really think long and hard about whether it’s appropriate to have an algorithm designed by total strangers – along with a lot of bad people online – parenting your children.”

 WHAT THE US IS DOING TO PROTECT CHILDREN ON SOCIAL MEDIA

US states are testing multiple strategies to protect children on social media, offering a road map for Australia as the online giants mount legal challenges to new guardrails.

In March last year, Utah passed first-in-the-nation laws that enforced strict age verification rules for social media users and banned kids under 18 unless they had parental consent.

But NetChoice – an industry body representing platforms including TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat – launched a court battle arguing the legislation impinged on the constitutional right to free speech and compromised data security.

Utah has since overhauled its scheme, with House member and key architect Jordan Teuscher saying the platforms pushed “as hard as they can” to dodge the laws.

While Utah planned to require government ID to verify a social media user’s age, Mr Teuscher said the platforms already had “pretty good methods” in place, so the law was reworked to enable the auditing and punishment of those that still allowed minors to sign up.

The parental consent rule was also shifted to what Mr Teuscher described as “more of a carrot approach”, with Utah legislating “a pretty broad private right of action for parents … to come and sue social media companies for the harms their minors are seeing”.

Under the revised law, the platforms have a legal “safe harbour” from such lawsuits if they obtain parental consent for underage users, limit them to three hours a day with an overnight blackout, and ban features such as push notifications, limitless scrolling and autoplay videos.

“It’s a huge industry, and right now, the incentives are certainly not aligned to protect kids,” Mr Teuscher said.

“I think that culture is changing as they see the writing on the wall.”

Florida moved in March to ban children under 14 from using social media while requiring parental consent for those aged 14 and 15, and House Speaker Paul Renner said the law meant it was up to the platforms to ensure those rules were met “as they see fit”.

He said parents and the government would have a similar cause of action to pursue “very significant” damages if social media companies evaded the new rules.

Florida’s legislation applies to platforms that use personalised algorithms, include addictive features such as notifications, allow users to upload and download content, and have at least 10 per cent of their daily users online for at least two hours per day.

Mr Renner said the online giants could therefore sidestep the crackdown by making “reasonable adjustments” to the operation of their platforms, saying there could “certainly be a kid-friendly social media platform under our bill tomorrow”.

“That would be a major win,” he said.

“We know that they know very, very well the age of these children, so we put the burden on the social media platforms.”

Originally published as ‘Ban all social media for kids’: US lawmakers’ urge to Australian government