South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas warns Tech Bros: Hands off our social media ban for kids

The architect of Australia’s world-leading ban on children using social media has urged both sides of politics to stand up to the ‘Tech Bros’ and Donald Trump.

South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas. Picture: Brenton Edwards

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The architect of Australia’s world-leading ban on children using social media has urged both sides of politics to stand up to the “Tech Bros” and resist their attempts to sway the Trump administration into targeting our age limit laws.

South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas – the first Australian politician to successfully advocate the ban – said he was alarmed at calls by tech giants to revisit Australia’s laws banning access by children under 16 to social media sites.

Mr Malinauskas urged Canberra to ignore any “bleating” from social media companies about freedom of speech, saying their were ultimately motivated only by a desire to maximise profits.

He said the clear and strong response from Australian families was to support the laws amid strong evidence that bullying, harassment, depression and anxiety were all being made worse for children through unfettered access to social media.

Mr Malinauskas joined with NSW Premier Chris Minns last year in advocating age limits, with the pair enlisting former High Court chief justice Robert French to devise a legally and constitutionally workable plan.

The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill passed federal parliament last November, with bipartisan support led both by Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton.

“We pursued banning social media for children because it’s in the interests of children, their parents and the community more broadly,” Mr Malinauskas told The Australian.

“Lifting social media bans may be in the interests of the big social media companies but it’s not in the interests of our children, so I will not stand for it.”

When the laws passed in November, X owner and Tesla founder Elon Musk attacked Australia’s initiative, saying: “Seems like a backdoor way to control access to the internet by all Australians.”

Mr Musk and Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg – Meta being the parent company of Facebook and Instagram – have also been lobbying the Trump administration to take action against Australia over the News Media Bargaining Code.

This has fuelled fears that the owners of the three big tech platforms affected by Australia’s age ban – Facebook, Instagram and X – will widen their lobbying efforts to roll back the age limit initiative.

Mr Malinauskas said any attempt to do so would breach the support Australian families had shown for the new laws.

“The evidence is clear, social media is doing our children harm,” he said.

“The Albanese Labor government legislated a social media ban, which is due to take effect later this year. Despite all the bleating from big social media companies, I have every confidence this ban will improve the lives of our young people, which is far more important than the financial interests of large, well-resourced social media companies.”

Since Australia passed its laws, several European countries have signalled their intention to do the same and ban kids from accessing social media.

Mr Zuckerberg has lobbied Donald Trump to intervene against EU moves to impose accountability on Big Tech, describing their plans as “almost like a tariff” in an attempt to secure the US President’s support for action.