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Government moves to set minimum age to access social media
ABC NEWS (Australia)
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9/10/2024
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'.
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00:00
There's still a lot of detail, really, to be ironed out here, but what we have seen,
00:06
I suppose, from the Prime Minister this morning is a pretty strong ambition, really, to have
00:10
this legislation before the Parliament, so all of that detail sorted out and before the
00:14
Parliament by the end of this year. Now, that's a fairly tight timeframe, really only a few
00:19
months for what would be a fairly complex project. Now, there are two key questions
00:24
that are still left really unanswered. The first is, what is the age limit actually going
00:28
to be? What number will that be? And how would this social media ban be enforced? Now,
00:34
the government says work's underway on the second of those two questions, enforcement
00:38
already. There are technical trials rolling out really from this week, looking at how
00:42
social media sites would verify the age of their users to ensure that young people aren't
00:48
accessing these platforms. They're also looking somewhat to South Australia, which has been
00:53
taking the lead on this for some months now. Now, it's pursuing its own path on these reforms.
00:57
The government says it does want to get these things aligned, but they're heading down the
01:01
path of really placing the onus on social media sites themselves to run this kind of
01:05
age verification, potentially hitting social media sites with large fines if they're allowing
01:11
users under the age of 14 in that particular case. Now, the Prime Minister was asked this
01:17
morning about his thoughts on the age question, where that limit should be. Here's a bit of
01:22
what he had to say on that.
01:24
We're looking at the range between 14 and 16. That's one of the reasons why we're having
01:29
a trial. And what we're looking at is how you deliver it. This is a global issue that
01:35
governments around the globe are trying to deal with. And so we can look at the experience,
01:40
look at the response as well of social media companies. Social media has a social responsibility
01:48
in order to have that social licence that they require to operate in a decent society.
01:55
They're not above everyone else.
01:58
This is, I suppose, a bit of a bipartisan position in some respects. The Coalition has
02:02
its own policy in this area. It plans to introduce legislation in its first 100 days of a new
02:08
coalition government, should it win the next election, to ban social media for people under
02:12
the age of 16. The shadow communications spokesman, David Coleman, has been accusing the government
02:18
of playing catch up in this space. He said in a statement, this has all the hallmarks
02:23
of a rushed and half-baked announcement. The government has been weak and indecisive on
02:28
this issue from the start. But the two parties are really in alignment in some respects that
02:33
social media should be banned for young people. An outlier, I suppose, is the Greens, who
02:38
take a very different position on this issue, saying that bans aren't really the right direction
02:43
at all. The Greens communications spokesperson, Sarah Hansen-Young, says that the government
02:48
should be working to ensure that social media is a safe place, a better place for young
02:53
people to be, rather than trying to push young people out of it. Here's a bit of what she
02:57
had to say.
02:59
All of the experts say this is not how you do it. The expertise and the evidence is that
03:05
we have to make the social media companies responsible for making their platforms safer,
03:11
for making them better, for making them responsible, not just blaming young people and kicking
03:19
young people off social media.
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