00:00There is growing political pressure to do more about what children see and share online,
00:06with ministers now discussing whether under-16s should be blocked from social media
00:11or face much stricter age checks.
00:14Supporters argue such limits could curb harmful content.
00:19Opponents say a blanket ban is difficult to police
00:22and risks driving young people into unregulated spaces online.
00:27There's no doubt that social media can be a good thing.
00:31It allows us to communicate with others, which, of course, is absolutely fine
00:35for the majority of those who use it responsibly.
00:39What we have, of course, are many young people,
00:41and, of course, we're talking about the under-16-year-olds who use it perhaps irresponsibly.
00:45There's online bullying.
00:47There's a whole lot of things that go on on chat rooms and the sort of like,
00:51which I am not exposed to because, of course, I'm obviously not of that sort of age group.
00:55And it's not something I grew up with.
00:57I was used to sort of telephoning people.
00:59And if you need to, you wrote them a letter.
01:01And, of course, all this was done with sort of prior consideration.
01:04So what we've got is a sort of a pretty dreadful sort of culture
01:08that's grown up in certain sort of parts of social media.
01:11And therefore, of course, the belief is, with a lot of justification,
01:15that somehow or other we need to sort of to wean kids off it.
01:19The real difficulty is they have it as a sort of a part of their lives.
01:23It's imbued into it.
01:26It's in the DNA that there's something that they do.
01:28So how do you get from where we are and then sort of take it away?
01:33It's a real, real problem.
01:34It's a bit like sort of smoking.
01:35Somehow or other, you have to sort of to disincentivize.
01:39And, of course, that's done by sort of heavy advertising and sort of taxes.
01:43But, of course, social media doesn't work like that.
01:45You can do it in your sort of on your telephone, in your sort of bedroom,
01:48away from sort of prying eyes.
01:50But there's little control.
01:52So the idea that sort of the government are going to be able to sort of do
01:54whatever they think they're going to do,
01:56which, of course, is to deprive kids or under 16-year-olds
01:59of being able to sort of have free access is it's fraught with problems.
02:03And, of course, there's a whole sort of set of sort of
02:05sort of liberties that sort of come into play.
02:07But nonetheless, it's a good thing.
02:09But like all sort of good intentions,
02:12they perhaps will lead to hell.
02:14And it's going to be very difficult to sort of to police.
02:17The government's Online Safety Act already places duties on platforms
02:22to protect children, including age assurance requirements
02:25and stronger content moderation.
02:28Now, the Department for Digital Culture, Media and Sport
02:32has said that it's exploring whether existing measures are enough
02:36or whether outright age limits could help.
02:40Of course, what we had, and of course, remember,
02:42it's only sort of five years or so since we had lockdowns,
02:45where we sort of we forced young people, all of us, let's face it,
02:48but young people in particular, where you go into that social sort of engagement
02:51and that sort of socialising and all the sort of skills that come with that.
02:56Well, we forced them to be in their bedrooms.
02:57And, of course, the sort of the advantage of social media was
03:00it allowed people to communicate.
03:02So that kind of gave it a sort of boost.
03:04But it was well on the sort of the way to sort of to be coming very embedded
03:09in sort of youth culture.
03:10So anything that sort of takes people out of the sort of the house
03:15and gets them to meet other people, young people do like to do things,
03:18which, of course, are sort of, you know, they get instant sort of hits,
03:21as it were.
03:22But I still come back to this sort of challenge that sort of the government's
03:25intention to sort of try and deprive young people of their sort of their hits
03:30is going to sort of come with a lot of pain.
03:33And I think it's going to be very difficult.
03:34And let's face it, you know, we're not going to have sort of inspectors
03:38coming around to people's houses, you know, they can't even do that
03:40with sort of TV glasses, let's face it.
03:42And, of course, there is a signal.
03:42So somehow or other, it comes back down to sort of parental responsibility.
03:47And therein lies the sort of the big difficulty.
03:50Pauling has shown significant concern amongst parents about online harms
03:55and mental health.
03:56But experts warn that any ban could be hard to enforce
04:00and may have unintended consequences.
04:04If children simply move to less visible apps,
04:07Australia's approach to under-16 restrictions
04:10is being watched closely as part of this debate.
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