‘Do better’: Warning as young Aussie kids easily access social media

Australian children are easily circumventing inadequate and poorly enforced social media age rules, despite platforms demonstrating a growing “capability” to detect younger users.

Exclusive: Four in five Australian children are easily circumventing inadequate and poorly enforced social media age rules, despite some platforms demonstrating a growing “capability” to detect younger users.

About 80 per cent of kids aged eight to 12 — or 1.3 million children — accessed one or more social media services last year in breach of existing limits of 13-years-old on most platforms, according to a new eSafety Commission report.

A majority of Australian children are accessing social media despite current age limits.

Ahead of Australia’s move to raise the minimum age for social media to 16 in December, the Commission has collected information from platforms on how they enforce current rules and found “mixed results,” with many simply relying on kids “self-declaring” their age.

The responses from YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snap, Reddit, Discord and Twitch estimating the number of children with active accounts did not align with data collected by eSafety in a recent survey of Australian kids.

Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok are some of the most popular platforms among younger kids. Picture: Denis Charlet/AFP

This was despite a handful of platforms increasingly adopting proactive tools to identify underage users, such as analysis of vocabulary, emoji use, location patterns indicating school attendance, and time spent playing online games or watching cartoons popular among children.

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant told News Corp the information provided by the social media companies suggested it was a “not a lack of capability” but a “lack of will” that had stopped many from meaningfully trying to detect and remove underage users.

“Maybe also a bit of wilful blindness that they’re (children) there,” she said.

“They are building the pipeline of young people for the future.”

eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant says platforms have to do beter on age rules. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

TikTok, Twitch, Snapchat and YouTube were among the platforms using proactive detection tools, while Reddit had no information about the age of its users at all.

Snapchat reported 438,883 average monthly users were children aged 13 to 15, Instagram said 351,135, Facebook said 153,223, TikTok said 199,710 and Discord said 98,508.

Ms Inman Grant said platforms “have to do better” noting some social media services did not even prevent a user who signed up as a child from then later editing their birthdate to appear over 18 years old.

eSafety also found about 54 per cent of children aged under 13 who used social media accessed services via a parent or carer’s account, while 36 per cent had their own account.

Ms Inman Grant said raising the social media age was about putting some “friction” in the system that makes it more of a “fair fight” for kids with developing brains to resist the deceptive, addictive and dark patterns elements of social media.

“We’re not trying to prevent them from gaming or communicating through messaging systems,” she said.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland says a new age limit will support parents to enforce rules with their kids. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

“It’s to give them some relief from all those opaque and deceptive features for a few more years, while we build their digital resilience and algorithmic literacy.”

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said the report showed how easy it was today for younger Australians to get a social media account, adding the new age limit restrictions would help parents navigate these challenges with their kids.

“Parents can feel empowered to have conversations with their children about having social media accounts and simply say ‘no, it’s not allowed,” she said.

“Young people will feel less pressure to be constantly online and spend more time connecting and interacting in person.”

Originally published as ‘Do better’: Warning as young Aussie kids easily access social media