Drinking, smoking ... now social media: New laws to ban children from apps

Children will be blocked from social media under sweeping national plans to shield young people from online harm by mandating strict age barriers in federal law and punishing tech giants that break the rules.

Australia will move before the next election to a national regime to force tech platforms to enforce age verification. A final age is not yet settled but could be within the 13- to 16-year-old range.

The plan is based on a South Australian proposal to ban social media for all children under 14.Credit: Getty Images

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will announce the plan on Tuesday after canvassing the proposal with state premiers on Friday, based on a South Australian proposal to ban social media for all children under the age of 14.

“Parents are worried sick about this. We know they’re working without a map – no generation has faced this challenge before,” Albanese said in a statement.

“The safety and mental and physical health of our young people is paramount. Parents want their kids off their phones and on the footy field. So do I.”

But federal and state leaders have yet to negotiate a position on the best age limit. They will also need to meet at national cabinet to decide how the regime will operate and whether it will require state and territory law to support the federal legislation.

The federal move follows a call from Coalition communications spokesman David Coleman earlier this year to block children under 16, an idea resisted by Communications Minister Michelle Rowland.

The nation’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, called for a “porn passport” one year ago to shield children from X-rated sites, but the government preferred a voluntary code of conduct instead.

SA Premier Peter Malinauskas gave the issue a new push last week by raising the age limit in talks ahead of a national cabinet meeting.

“The evidence shows early access to addictive social media is causing our kids harm,” Malinauskas said.

NSW Premier Chris Minns is preparing to co-host a social media summit in October and backed the federal and SA moves, while Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan backed Malinauskas and said, without providing details, she intended to follow suit.

“It’s time to give parents the power to push back – not against kids, but against the tech giants,” she said.

Federal officials said all states and territories were committed to tackling the issue and noted the SA plan to legislate a duty of care for social media companies. This is intended to mandate the age regime in the law while giving social media companies a potential defence if they can show they took reasonable steps to enforce the age limit.

The national plan comes after the SA government commissioned former High Court chief justice Robert French to review the issue.

The review cited medical experts who warned of problems with bullying, sexting, aggression, sexualisation and other challenges for young people on the major social media platforms.

In one estimate that highlighted the scale of the exposure, the French review cited evidence that TikTok removed more than 76 million accounts last year because it suspected they belonged to underage users.

It also cited evidence from the Australian Psychological Association that adolescents averaged 3.3 hours a day on social media, with implications for their self-esteem.

The global debate intensified this year after social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, released a book, The Anxious Generation, and drew a link between the rise of social media and the growth in mental health challenges.

‘Parents are worried sick about this. We know they’re working without a map – no generation has faced this challenge before.’

PM Anthony Albanese

“The first generation of Americans who went through puberty with smartphones (and the entire internet) in their hands became more anxious, depressed, self-harming and suicidal,” Haidt concluded.

“No other theory has been able to explain why rates of anxiety and depression surged among adolescents in so many countries at the same time and in the same way.”

However, this is disputed by other psychologists, and the Australian scheme is likely to be hotly debated among experts who disagree about whether social media is the key cause of changes in young people’s mental health. Advocates who favour a free and open internet, such as Digital Rights Watch, have cast doubt about the effectiveness of age restrictions.

The governments of France, Germany, the United Kingdom and some American states are all considering forms of age verification. Some companies use face-scanning apps to guess ages while others ask a person to submit their ID.

In a controversial decision a year ago, Rowland resisted calls from Inman Grant to start working on age-verification technology.

In April, the Coalition said it wanted new laws barring children under 16 from using social media. Rowland then announced a trial of the technology in May.

Rowland said the age-assurance trial, which costs $6.5 million and started in July, would be an important step towards a national regime.

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