Victoria on board with national plan to introduce age limits for social media

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan says she is ‘thrilled’ Anthony Albanese has stepped in with plans to restrict the age children can access social media and has revealed social platforms are banned in her household.

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has backed Anthony Albanese’s plan to introduce age limits for social media and has revealed that she bans most social platforms for her own children.

Following her South Australian counterpart Peter Malinauskas’ legislative push to ban kids under 14 from accessing social media, Ms Allan said Victoria was prepared to introduce its own legislation, but instead will now prioritise a nationally-consistent approach.

“Victoria was prepared to go it alone and do this in step with South Australia,” Ms Allan said on Tuesday.

“But I’m absolutely delighted and thrilled that the Prime Minister has stepped in and is determined to take a national approach.

“And this is where, using the work that’s come out of South Australia, the Robert French report is a good starting point to look at legislation, to look at how we can put in place a ban for kids under the age of 14, and then for those 14 and 15 how we can introduce a parental consent mechanism.”

The Premier said her government had been looking at legislation around strengthening support around the safe use of social media, and shared she had concerns that some messaging online perpetrated a lack of respect towards women.

“We’ve been working with other state leaders, and particularly, I want to acknowledge the leadership of South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas,” she said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan arrive at the Victorian Labor Party conference at Moonee Valley Racecourse. Picture: David Crosling

“There is a draft of legislation that is now available for the Commonwealth here in Victoria and South Australia to go and consult on.”

The state will engage in its own consultations with parents, teachers, children, as well as online safety and mental health experts, which will feed into the Commonwealth process.

The Prime Minister’s decision to go ahead with a national regime was confirmed to the Victorian leader on Monday night.

“It certainly makes sense to have a national regime in place, because I think we all understand that technology does not stop at state borders,” the state Labor leader said.

In announcing her endorsement at South Melbourne Primary School, the Premier and mother of two shared that social media is a hot topic of discussion in her home.

“I can see from my own kids’ use of technology, how it can be absolutely a good tool for education purposes … but I’ve also seen how some platforms, with the click of one button, the accidental click of one button, can send a tsunami of inappropriate content into my kids’ feeds,” she said.

“So we don’t allow social media in our house. Well, there’s kids messenger, which is completely parent controlled, other than that, there’s no social media in our household.

“And that causes conflict in our household, because my kids, they know they want to be able to access YouTube and these other platforms. We want to help parents push back against the tech giants, not push back against their kids.”

Social media platforms. (Photo illustration by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Victorian Opposition leader John Pesutto said the Liberals will work with the state government to protect young people from social media harms.

But we haven’t seen a lot of detail from the Allan Labor government. We’ll await that detail, but we are certainly inclined to want to work very constructively with the government on this measure,” Mr Pesutto said.

“We know it will take a national approach, it’s not as if we can achieve these things within state borders.”

Senior Sociologist at the University of Adelaide Dr Samantha Schulz said there is logic in establishing boundaries that limit young people’s access to social media, but appeared critical of the ban.

“However, young people are not ‘the’ problem and regulating youth misses the more urgent task of regulating irresponsible social media platforms,” Dr Schulz said.

“Prohibiting or limiting young people’s access to social media may provide short-term protection but is no replacement for the critical and social literacies we should have been valuing in Australia schooling for decades.“

Burnet Institute deputy program director of behaviours and health risks Megan Lim said that enforcing a social media ban for children would be difficult and requires a system for age verification.

“My research has shown that children and parents do see the value of online age verification. However, they aren’t sure if they can trust current technologies,” Associate Professor Lim said.

“We particularly need to engage with children and young people to hear their ideas. Children do understand the problem and they can contribute to the solutions.”