Social media ‘crackdown’ is little more than flimsy thought bubble

The economy is barely growing, households and small businesses are struggling to stay afloat, young Australians are being denied the dream of homeownership at record rates, federal-state relations are a mess and national security threats are rising.

Instead of getting stuck in on these serious policy challenges, the Albanese government has this week decided to offer voters a vague and unoriginal plan to block children from social media and impose penalties for tech giants that don’t comply with any new regime.

Amid the fanfare of the announcement, voters should not forget to read the fine print: a final age limit has not yet been settled, there are no details over how the verification system would work and what technology would be used, no details of privacy implications, no insight into whether the regime would require concurrent state and federal laws, no information about what the penalties may be for social media companies that don’t comply, and no plan for how the Commonwealth would respond to any legal challenge by those corporations.

Many parents are struggling to deal with their child’s social media usage.Credit: iStock

Readers should also be aware Labor’s move follows a call from the Coalition this year to block children under 16 from social media sites, and News Corp publications have also been running a shouty and simplistic campaign in favour of age limits for several months.

The policy, announced by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Communications Minister Michelle Rowland on Tuesday, represents nothing more than a thought bubble. The substantive detail of the announcement ran to just 108 words in a press release.

Albanese and Rowland promised to introduce the laws by the end of the year. But with a federal election due by May and the laws likely to spark debate in parliament, a round of consultation with tech companies and probably a prolonged Senate inquiry, it’s far from clear whether any change would be enacted before Albanese goes to the polls. A small trial of age verification is about to get under way in Australia but results will not be known for some time.

Similar attempts to introduce age verification in other countries and jurisdictions have either failed, stalled or been held up in the courts. In a document released under freedom of information laws, eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant said of attempts to keep children away from harmful sites: “No country in the world has solved this problem.”

The hollowness of this latest announcement is a shame because Albanese seems genuinely concerned about the dark side of social media on our youngest Australians. “The safety and mental and physical health of our young people is paramount,” the prime minister said on Tuesday. “Parents are worried sick about this.”

For some parents, an age verification system will represent an unwelcome intrusion by government on how they manage their own children. Other parents need help dealing with this issue. But all parents deep down also know the practical realities of putting this genie back in the bottle.

The question is whether this plan will help. The harm caused by some sites and platforms to our children is not in doubt. But an untested regime with an unclear implementation date and opaque enforcement rules is not the right approach to tackling an issue of such importance.

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