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By Peter Guo, Jennifer Jett and Brian Cheng Nov. 28, 2024, 11:22 PM GMT+11
Australian lawmakers on Thursday approved a landmark ban on social media for children under 16 in some of the world’s toughest such controls.
The ban, which aims to address the impact of excessive social media use on children’s physical and mental health, affects social media platforms including X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and Reddit, but not YouTube.
The platforms, which bear sole responsibility for enforcement, have one year to figure out how to implement the age limit, which is the highest set by any country. If there are systemic failures to keep children from having accounts, the platforms are liable for fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars ($33 million).
Senators debated the legislation late into the night on the last day of their parliamentary session, which Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor government had targeted as the deadline for it to pass. The bill, which is also largely supported by the opposition Liberal Party, passed the House of Representatives on Wednesday by a vote of 102 to 13.
Supporters of the ban have cited the effect of harmful depictions of body image on girls and the effect of misogynistic content on boys. Its passage comes after a series of Australian teenagers died by suicide over what their families said was online bullying.
“The basis for this is that there is a feeling amongst the majority of Australians that social media does more harm than good,” said Rob Nicholls, a senior research associate in media and communication at the University of Sydney.
A YouGov poll released Tuesday found that 77% of Australians support the ban, up from 61% in August.
Other countries have tried to impose limits on social media for children, including the U.S., which requires technology companies to obtain parental consent to collect data from children under 13. But the Australian proposal goes further, with no exemptions for parental consent or pre-existing accounts.
Opponents have criticized the Australian ban as too blunt an instrument and said its passage was too rushed.
The bill, which was introduced in Parliament last week, allowed for only one day to submit opinions on it. Sen. Matt Canavan, who opposed the bill, said there had been 15,000 submissions about it during that day and that lawmakers had been able to review only a fraction of them.
“This is a highly emotional issue and there is an understandable demand for politicians to be seen to be ‘doing something’ about it,” he said Tuesday in a dissent that was published as part of a Senate committee report. “Yet it is also a highly complex area that should be examined carefully not in the hasty fashion that has beset this process.”
Google and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, had urged Australia to delay the legislation’s passage Tuesday, saying more time was needed to assess the potential impact of the ban. ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, also said more consultation was needed.
Elon Musk, the owner of X, blasted the ban last week as “a backdoor way to control access to the Internet by all Australians.”
Officials plan to enforce the age cut-off by trialing an age-verification system that could include biometrics or government identification, which no other country has tried, raising privacy concerns.
A Senate committee signed off on the legislation late Tuesday but said social media platforms should find “alternative methods for assuring age” rather than forcing users to submit personal information, such as their passports or other digital identification.
Nicholls said the social media platforms would also be fined for failing to destroy personal information as soon as possible after they verifying users’ ages.
Outside the legislature, the ban has come under heavy scrutiny from parents and scholars who say social media can be a crucial source of support for young people, especially those who feel marginalized.
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