Both parties support a social media ban for young people under 16

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The coalition has pledged to ban people under 16 from social media in their first 100 days in office. The Albanese government supports the idea but has questions about implementation.

Transcript

00:00The coalition says this technology does already exist and is ready to be used as well.

00:07It's been discussing this idea for months now, really, but just in the past few days

00:11has finally committed to actually implementing it once in office and doing so quite quickly.

00:15It's promising to do so in its first 100 days after taking government.

00:20But that's prompted questions about the how around all of this and whether that technology

00:25does in fact exist and is ready to be used.

00:28There are a few ideas bubbling away.

00:30This is being looked at in other parts of the world as well.

00:33Some are digital tokens, unique digital tokens that essentially provide proof of age.

00:39There's talk about facial recognition technology as well, requiring users to upload video selfies

00:44of themselves and having software analyze their age based on their appearance too.

00:49There are some experts saying this is still fairly nascent technology and might not be

00:53ready for a massive sort of nationwide rollout like what is being proposed.

00:58But the coalition disputes that and says where there's a will, there's a way.

01:02If they go ahead and legislate this and require social media companies to put this kind of

01:07barriers in place, they'll find a way to do it.

01:09Now, the Labor government is very supportive of this idea.

01:13The prime minister says he's very attracted to the idea of restricting social media to

01:18people under 16 years of age.

01:20But they do have questions around the implementation.

01:23They're pointing to a trial of this kind of age verification technology that's already

01:28underway.

01:29There is work being done within government.

01:31That's more around access to online pornography, but it's sort of being pivoted towards this

01:35social media issue as well.

01:38Here's the finance minister, Katie Gallagher, saying that the government does like the principle

01:42behind this.

01:43It just has questions about how it can be done.

01:47It's not simple.

01:48I wish it was.

01:49But we're very actively engaged in it and we hear all of the concerns of parents.

01:56Many of us.

01:57Well, most of us are parents ourselves.

01:59You know, we're dealing with it in our households as well.

02:02So there is clearly will across both sides of the parliament on this issue.

02:06It is now just that question of practicalities.

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