MELBOURNE: Australian lawmakers passed landmark rules to ban under 16s from social media on Thursday, approving one of the world’s toughest crackdowns on popular sites like Facebook, Instagram and X.
The bill has now passed both parliamentary chambers with bipartisan support, and social media firms will soon be expected to take “reasonable steps” to prevent young teens from having accounts.
The firms — who face fines of up to Aus$50 million (US$32.5 million) for failing to comply — have described the laws as “vague”, “problematic” and “rushed”.
The legislation passed parliament’s lower chamber on Wednesday and passed the Senate late on Thursday evening. It is now all but certain to become law.
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Centre-left Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, eyeing an election early next year, has enthusiastically championed the new rules and rallied Aussie parents to get behind it.
In the run up to the vote, he painted social media as “a platform for peer pressure, a driver of anxiety, a vehicle for scammers and, worst of all, a tool for online predators”.
He wanted, he said, young Australians “off their phones and onto the footy and cricket field, the tennis and netball courts, in the swimming pool”.
‘I’ll find a way’
But young Australians like 12-year-old Angus Lydom, are not impressed.
“I’d like to keep using it. And it’ll be a weird feeling to not have it, and be able to talk to all my friends at home,” he told AFP.
Many are likely to try to find ways around it.
“I’ll find a way. And so will all my other friends” Lydom said.
Similarly, 11-year-old Elsie Arkinstall said there was still a place for social media, particularly for children wanting to watch tutorials about baking or art, many of which appear on social media.
“Kids and teens should be able to explore those techniques because you can’t learn all those things from books,” she added.
On paper, the ban is one of the strictest in the world.
But the current legislation offers almost no details on how the rules will be enforced - prompting concern among experts that it will simply be a symbolic piece of legislation that is unenforceable.
Among the countries taking action is Australia, which on Thursday passed a landmark law banning children under 16 from social media, and threatening stiff fines against companies that fail to comply.
Once celebrated as a means of staying connected and informed, platforms such as X, Snapchat, TikTok and Facebook have been tarnished by cyberbullying, the spread of illegal content, and election-meddling claims.
Here we take a look at various attempts by other countries to regulate the wild west of social media for young people.
EU keeps France waiting
In June 2023 France passed a law requiring social media platforms to check the age of users and obtain parental consent for those under 15 years of age.
Under the law, if social networks fail to meet these terms they will be fined up to one percent of their global turnover.
However, more than a year later the law has not come into force as the European Commission has yet to check it conforms with EU law.
Norway and Spain
In Norway, the minimum age for accessing social networks is set at 13.
But more than half of nine-year-olds, and the overwhelming majority of 12-year-olds, are on social networks, research shows.
In light of this failure to apply the current rules, the government wants to set a minimum age of 15 and is looking for an effective way to implement it.
Spain also presented a bill in June to ban access to social media platforms for under-16s, but it has not yet clarified the process of age verification, and no date has been set for the examination of the text.
‘Cinderella’ in South Korea
In 2011 South Korea adopted what was known as the “Cinderella” law, which banned under-15s from playing online games between midnight and 6.00 am, a move in part aimed at curbing tiredness in school.
But a decade later the government reversed the decision, replacing it with a “choice permit” system allowing parents to set approved playing times.
Only a tiny fraction have ever used the system.
In August this year lawmakers proposed a bill aimed at regulating use of social media by under-16s.
In response, more than a dozen youth organisations slammed the bill as a discriminatory attempt to control young people similar to the “Cinderella” law.
It will be at least 12 months before the details are worked out by regulators and the ban comes into effect.
Some companies will likely be granted exemptions, such as WhatsApp and YouTube, which teenagers may need to use for recreation, school work or other reasons.
Late amendments were introduced to ensure government-issued digital ID cannot be used as a means of age verification.
Australia leads the way
Social media expert Susan Grantham told AFP that digital literacy programmes that teach children to think “critically” about what they see online should be adopted - similar to a model used in Finland.
The legislation will be closely monitored by other countries, with many weighing whether to implement similar bans.
Lawmakers from Spain to Florida have proposed social media bans for young teens, although none of the measures have been implemented yet.
China has restricted access for minors since 2021, with under-14s not allowed to spend more than 40 minutes a day on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
Online gaming time for children is also limited in China.
