Advocates call on NSW government to raise social media age limit for teenagers, as petition is tabled by state opposition

ABC NEWS (Australia)

A petition demanding new age restrictions on social media has been delivered to state parliament. It comes as a world-wide study finds governments are failing young people as their mental health declines.

Transcript

00:00Those who knew Liv Evans say she was an incredible girl.

00:05She loved art and nature and had a cheeky sense of humour.

00:09But at 15, while battling anorexia, she took her own life.

00:13Clutching his daughter's ashes, her father Rob remembers how social media made her situation

00:18worse.

00:19Because of the way the algorithms are built, she just kept obviously getting more and more

00:23of that stuff.

00:24And people that are holding themselves out to be healthy, eating 200 calories a day and

00:29being skinny, and she used to say, I'm fat, I'm fat, I'm fat, but she'd weigh like 30-32

00:34kilos.

00:35Today, he was in Parliament as a petition with over 113,000 signatures was presented,

00:41calling for the minimum legal age for social media use to be 16.

00:45Parents are saying they need a circuit breaker.

00:47They need agency to say to their kids, sorry, you can't go on social media because it's

00:54illegal.

00:55Parliament's holding a summit in October to explore better regulation and age restrictions

01:00on social media are on the table.

01:02My view is at best it's a giant time suck for young people and at worst it has serious

01:08deleterious effects on their mental health, on their wellbeing.

01:12On the same day this petition was delivered to Parliament, a worldwide study has found

01:17that youth mental health around the globe is at crisis levels.

01:21And while social media was identified as a factor, so was a lack of investment in mental

01:26health support, as well as intergenerational inequality.

01:30They can't buy houses, they've got insecure work, they're coming out of their period of

01:34education with huge debt.

01:36A world of worry that many believe social media is making worse.

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