Australia's Social Media Age Limit: Missed Opportunity for Nuanced Regulation

Key Quotes

"Australia last week introduced a legal expectation that social media platforms will take reasonable steps to stop Australians under the age of 16 from having accounts on their platform it applies to all platforms that fit a very broad definition of social media platforms but the government to give some kind of certainty said we're giving you a list of 10 platforms that definitely fit this requirement and that is all the major ones you can think of facebook instagram tiktok youtube which was a kind of controversial inclusion at points snapchat a few others as well and the law itself has passed a year ago it was given a 12 month leading time to figure out the details as certain aspects of implementation were figured out at the same time the government also ran a government commission trial talking age check technologies and that law was actually passed after a pretty quick process where earlier in 2024 there was a little bit of support around from some state premiers like heads of australian states for something like this and then in a radio interview our prime minister was asked do you support a campaign which was launched that month by like a group backed by a popular radio station that said hey we want to raise the minimum age of 13 to 16 so it was also another mainstream media organization running a very similar campaign that was the prime minister said in may yep i back it i support this and then six months later it was a law so um we saw a pretty quick process you know a way for it to actually be locked in and the actual details of implementation which kind of went back and forth and there was lots of questions about how do you actually take this idea which is a very kind of broad law and actually implemented took a little bit longer and then yes starting last week that was the deadlines that platforms had to do something and we did see widespread children's accounts being restricted we also saw widespread circumventing so definitely didn't go off without a hitch which we'll get into a chance to talk about that later on but now you know as of this week we're now almost a week into our post social media world for for teens and you know largely i guess life has continued in a way"

Cam Wilson explains that Australia's new social media age limit, which prohibits individuals under 16 from having accounts on designated platforms, was enacted quickly following a campaign supported by mainstream media. The law, passed a year prior, allowed for a 12-month implementation period, during which age verification technologies were explored. Wilson notes that the rollout has seen both account restrictions and widespread circumvention, indicating it has not been entirely seamless.

"we've just a real mishmash of justifications the prime minister started off by saying social media is causing social harm and we saw that message honed over time into a like argument about the kind of like you know they would call predatory algorithms and in the features of platforms that were encouraging harmful use of their products which is to people say on there longer radicalization all that kind of stuff essentially became like a touch grass policy like as in like get the kids off their damn phones and you know onto the footy fields or whatever the problem with that is that when they had to then translate that idea into practice what we ended up with was this policy that while it had a very wide definition of what a social media platform was it also had exclusions for things like messaging apps weren't included in that and then like the follow on question is like what's a messaging app and like snapchat was ruled as not a messaging app but like whatsapp and telegram were and like whatsapp i don't know if people are familiar with these features i don't really use them that often but it actually has like a lot of social features you've got stories you've got kind of like a facebook page style like mass broadcast stuff gaming was also excluded as well and particularly in the idea of in the world of youth safety at the moment like roblox has been such a hot button issue and roblox of course is excluded because it's a game and then also the fact that like the way the law was written was that it only applies to people using accounts on the platforms which allows those platforms still to be used in a logged out state you can still watch youtube or you want you can actually use the tiktok app without being logged in and you will still get customized like feeds you still get algorithmic recommendations so when they had to translate this app like this this law into something that actually addressed those things that they had raised as the issues you kind of saw like how it almost drifted away from that in a way because it's like okay great so you want kids to be off their phones and yet like for example you can still watch as much youtube and tiktok as you want you can still play roblox you can still do like all these things i would not be surprised if we didn't see a drastic change in kids' screen time because like maybe they'll go outside but i think a lot of them will just substitute like one thing for another whether it's like going to snapchat to whatsapp whether it's going from like logged in youtube to logged out youtube so for those reasons like the success of this as a law while i partly is about like how well it's keeping people out you know there's certainly had questions over it at the moment but we'll have more idea later on i don't know like how well it will work and i also think maybe they just kind of ratcheted up as it goes along maybe they catch more and more people and restrict them more and more from these social media platforms that they they are allowed to be on but these other purposes for the law because they're not even addressing it's just a very bizarre to kind of understand the effectiveness of and so like age verification technology and age estimation technology which is such a hot button issue really to me became only like one part of how we understand how effective it is and how we look at it in the future and particularly as we the law came close to being into effect we saw a real change of the goalposts by the government to go from being like we're going to do something about like cyber bullying we're going to do like there's going to do something about like radicalization there's going to do something about kids spending too long online and not getting enough sleep to like eventually you know a week before the law came into effect the prime minister said this law is already a success because it's started conversations and they said like the point of the law is to be is to change like social expectations so not everyone will just assume that everyone else is on social media at that age and to me i'm just like like i feel like that is such a drift of the law from its original purposes and such a low bar that you kind of are questioning like what is the point why we ended up doing it like this because if that's that success i guess you could argue that there's been plenty of conversations there's been widespread usage and i think you know like to their credit i've definitely thought about my screen time in the meantime i've definitely thought you know more than i thought in a long time about how kids are using social media in terms of effectiveness and maybe we'll get a chance to chat about this later i have just been critical about it because i think like