‘We’ll lift social media access age in 100 days’, says Peter Dutton

Peter Dutton has vowed to lift the minimum age of access to social media to 16 within 100 days of taking office, declaring it would be one of the top policies on his agenda.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. Picture: NewsWire / John Appleyard

Peter Dutton has vowed to lift the minimum age of access to social media to 16 within 100 days of taking office, declaring it would be one of the top policies on his agenda should the Coalition come to government.

The opposition has indicated it would seek to legislate bans on children accessing social media, but it is the first time the Coalition leader has laid out a timeframe for the reforms.

“I would put it at the top of my list for the first 100 days in government,” he told Nova. “So within the first three months, we would introduce it, and it reflects the community values and where the view is for the vast majority of Australians at the moment.”

Mr Dutton said the policy to stop children gaining access to inappropriate material through social media was “sensible”, given their “impressionable minds”.

“I worked (as a police officer) in the sex offender and other areas, where it was pre-internet, but it was an area where you saw people exposed to the worst element of society and how they coped with that,” he said.

“But now it’s on an industrial scale in terms of the content that young kids are subject to.”

But Communications Minister Michelle Rowland blasted Mr Dutton’s pledge to introduce legislation on the matter within three months of taking office and said “changing age limits without knowing which technologies can enforce it won’t achieve the outcomes parents need”.

“Peter Dutton needs to be ­upfront and clear about what the ­details of his policy are and which technology the Coalition will ­require social media companies to use,” she said.

“Age limits currently exist for social media access, but are regularly circumvented or not enforced, which is precisely why the government is conducting an ­important $6.5m trial of age assurance technology.”

The age limit to access Instagram is 13, with the platform requiring users to “provide their birthday, photo identification, and/or a video selfie”.

TikTok’s age limit is also set at 13, but critics of the platform have said the age verification measures are easy for children to bypass.

Anthony Albanese said it was clear there was “a major issue” when it came to young people’s access to harmful material online.

“I know that parents on the sidelines of footy games or netball games, after school, are talking about the issue of harm, which has been done to our young people with engagement in social media in a way that causes distress, that can cause anxiety,” he said. “And this is something that we need a whole-of-government response to, but a whole-of-society response to as well. And that’s what we’re doing.”