Protect childhood from big tech
Regardless of whether they have read US social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation, most parents, grandparents and teachers would agree with him that the “rewiring of childhood” through social media has been a huge blunder, detrimental to children’s and teenagers’ mental health and wellbeing. For that reason, most Australians will agree with Anthony Albanese’s move to impose minimum age access to social media platforms before the upcoming election. The initiative, backed by premiers, has been inspired by South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas’s legislative push banning youngsters under 14 from setting up online accounts, to protect them from digital harm such as around-the-clock bullying, doxing, deepfake pornography and body shaming. NSW Premier Chris Minns has supported a cut-off age of 16 and announced a social media summit for next month to address the harm online platforms are having on the young. Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan backs the Prime Minister’s plan and Queensland Premier Steven Miles is anticipating further collaboration between the states and Canberra.
The initiative matters – enormously – to the future of young people and our society. It will also be a major test of the strength of government to stand up for the national interest against tech giants such as Meta, owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The move, fortunately, has bipartisan support. Peter Dutton is committed to lifting the minimum age of access to social media to 16 within 100 days of a Coalition government taking office. And Mr Albanese has said a total ban on under-16s accessing social media is a “good way to go”. There is “nothing social about social media”, which is taking kids “away from real friends and real experiences”, he said.
The government had taken a first bold step at addressing the most concerning of many harms the tech platforms were inflicting on Australia, Michael Miller, executive chairman of News Corp Australasia, said on Tuesday, but they needed to go further. The platforms must also be forced, he said, to stop running scams and fakes, promoting body shaming and trolling, peddling misinformation, and impacting Australia’s democratic way of life. They must also be made to pay for the Australian news content they use to build their fortunes, and adhere to Australia’s rules and accept responsibility for the social and commercial damage they are causing.
Such action must also cover the fake use of images of figures such as Andrew Forrest, Dick Smith, David Koch, Gina Rinehart and Jim Chalmers, without their permission, to promote “get rich quick” scams. The global reach of such frauds, which have fleeced 30,000 Australians out of hundreds of millions of dollars with the help of mass advertising on Facebook and other platforms, was exposed by David Murray and Amanda Hodge earlier this year.
The challenge in tackling tech giants, as Mr Miller told the National Press Club in June, is that they and their social media networks operate outside Australia’s legal system. If Mr Albanese is serious about addressing the harm being caused to young people by tech giants, this is where he must start. It is time, as Mr Miller said in June, for them “to play by our rules”. On behalf of 27 million Australians, he said, government had the mandate and ability to reassert itself “by resetting the rules for global platforms’ access to Australians”. Tech monopolies should be subject to laws and requirements under which they would be liable for all content, with penalties that incorporated criminal sanctions for companies and executives that break the rules.
Tech monopolies should face the same scrutiny as other companies. Governments must act effectively, not just make promises. Parents and schools concerned about a groundswell of evidence about harm being inflicted are acting to protect children from what Jonathan Haidt told Paul Kelly in March was “the phone-based childhood” that sadly, ushered in “the definitive end of the play-based childhood” from 2010-15 onwards. But families and schools can do only so much. Government must do the legal and legislative heavy lifting.