Social Media and the Age of Digital Access: The Australian Parliament and the National Digital Asset Ownership Union (NAMA) condemns the New Social Media Age Law
The new law will take effect in a year and social media companies have time to meet it. These include taking “reasonable steps to prevent children who have not reached a minimum age from having accounts.” Children and their parents will not be held responsible for violating the upcoming restrictions, because the responsibility rests with platform providers.
“We want Australian children to have a childhood, and we want parents to know the Government is in their corner,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a statement earlier this month. “We know some kids will find workarounds, but we’re sending a message to social media companies to clean up their act.”
The Prime Minister said that the rules are expected to apply to the platforms that are named in the law. Sites used for education, including YouTube, would be exempt, as are messaging apps like WhatsApp.
Tech companies will face fines of up to 50 millionAUD if they don’t enforce the new age restrictions, but they don’t know how they will do it. The law doesn’t require users to provide their government ID for verification.
Meta criticized the bill when it was introduced in the Australian parliament last week, calling it “inconsistent and ineffective.” The company urged the Australian government to delay passing the legislation, citing “uncertainty surrounding the ‘reasonable steps’ that need to be taken” for impacted platforms to enforce it. X owner Elon Musk has also slammed the law, alleging that it seems like “a backdoor way to control access to the Internet by all Australians.”
Up to 50 million Australian dollars is the amount of fines that will be levied against platforms for their failures to prevent kids under the age of 16 from holding accounts.
Privacy protections are strengthened by the amendments. Platforms would not be able to demand government-issued identity documents or use a government system for digital identification.
The House is going to pass the amendments on Friday. Critics fear that banning young children from social media will hurt the privacy of users who are over the age of 16.
Mental health experts think the ban on social media could lead to mental health problems for many children.
Shoebridge told the Senate that this policy will hurt vulnerable young people the most, especially in regional communities and the gay community.
The Australian Online Safety and Suicide Prevention Platforms (SALES) are Running into a Brick Wall: The Response of Australia to a “Monumental Moment in Protecting Children’s Mental Health and Connection”
“This is a responsibility these companies should have been fulfilling long ago, but for too long they have shirked these responsibilities in favor of profit,” she added.
Online safety campaigner Sonya Ryan, whose 15-year-old daughter Carly was murdered by a 50-year-old pedophile who pretended to be a teenager online, described the Senate vote as a “monumental moment in protecting our children from horrendous harms online.”
“It’s too late for my daughter, and the many other children who have suffered terribly, and those who have lost their lives in Australia, but let us embrace this together,” she told the AP in an email.
Wayne Holdsworth, whose teenage son Mac took his own life after falling victim to an online sextortion scam, had advocated for the age restriction and took pride in its passage.
I am bursting with pride because of the Senate decision,” Holdsworth told the AP in an email.
Christopher Stone, executive director of Suicide Prevention Australia, the governing body for the suicide prevention sector, said the legislation failed to consider positive aspects of social media in supporting young people’s mental health and sense of connection.
The government is running into a brick wall by rushing the legislation. Stone said the decisions made by young Australians should be evidence based.
The platforms had objected that the law was difficult to implement, and had urged the Senate to delay the vote until June next year when a government evaluation of age assurance technologies made its recommendation on how young children could be excluded.
The legislation was rushed through Parliament without adequate scrutiny, poses privacy risks for all users and undermines the authority of parents to make decisions for their children.