Government moves to set minimum age to access social media

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The Prime Minister wants legislation banning young people from social media before parliament by the end of this year. Details on how the ban would work are still scant - but Anthony Albanese says parents are 'worried sick'.

Transcript

00:00There's still a lot of detail, really, to be ironed out here, but what we have seen,

00:06I suppose, from the Prime Minister this morning is a pretty strong ambition, really, to have

00:10this legislation before the Parliament, so all of that detail sorted out and before the

00:14Parliament by the end of this year. Now, that's a fairly tight timeframe, really only a few

00:19months for what would be a fairly complex project. Now, there are two key questions

00:24that are still left really unanswered. The first is, what is the age limit actually going

00:28to be? What number will that be? And how would this social media ban be enforced? Now,

00:34the government says work's underway on the second of those two questions, enforcement

00:38already. There are technical trials rolling out really from this week, looking at how

00:42social media sites would verify the age of their users to ensure that young people aren't

00:48accessing these platforms. They're also looking somewhat to South Australia, which has been

00:53taking the lead on this for some months now. Now, it's pursuing its own path on these reforms.

00:57The government says it does want to get these things aligned, but they're heading down the

01:01path of really placing the onus on social media sites themselves to run this kind of

01:05age verification, potentially hitting social media sites with large fines if they're allowing

01:11users under the age of 14 in that particular case. Now, the Prime Minister was asked this

01:17morning about his thoughts on the age question, where that limit should be. Here's a bit of

01:22what he had to say on that.

01:24We're looking at the range between 14 and 16. That's one of the reasons why we're having

01:29a trial. And what we're looking at is how you deliver it. This is a global issue that

01:35governments around the globe are trying to deal with. And so we can look at the experience,

01:40look at the response as well of social media companies. Social media has a social responsibility

01:48in order to have that social licence that they require to operate in a decent society.

01:55They're not above everyone else.

01:58This is, I suppose, a bit of a bipartisan position in some respects. The Coalition has

02:02its own policy in this area. It plans to introduce legislation in its first 100 days of a new

02:08coalition government, should it win the next election, to ban social media for people under

02:12the age of 16. The shadow communications spokesman, David Coleman, has been accusing the government

02:18of playing catch up in this space. He said in a statement, this has all the hallmarks

02:23of a rushed and half-baked announcement. The government has been weak and indecisive on

02:28this issue from the start. But the two parties are really in alignment in some respects that

02:33social media should be banned for young people. An outlier, I suppose, is the Greens, who

02:38take a very different position on this issue, saying that bans aren't really the right direction

02:43at all. The Greens communications spokesperson, Sarah Hansen-Young, says that the government

02:48should be working to ensure that social media is a safe place, a better place for young

02:53people to be, rather than trying to push young people out of it. Here's a bit of what she

02:57had to say.

02:59All of the experts say this is not how you do it. The expertise and the evidence is that

03:05we have to make the social media companies responsible for making their platforms safer,

03:11for making them better, for making them responsible, not just blaming young people and kicking

03:19young people off social media.

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