In recent trials, key age-checking technology behind the teen social media ban could only guess people's ages within an 18-month range in 85 per cent of cases. The social media ban for under-16s is due to take effect in December, but experts say the government should reconsider the policy.
00:00There are thousands of students who have taken part in these trials in schools over
00:06the last four months, in particular really trying out facial age estimation, face scanning.
00:13So it looks at all these data points on your face, things like how far apart your ears
00:17and your eyes are and how big your nose is, things like that, and makes a call about how
00:23old it thinks you are.
00:24Now the problem is that it's not always all that accurate.
00:27As you said, they're, you know, within 18 months, 85% of the time.
00:34So this is, I guess, some of the results that we got from kids in the classroom in Canberra
00:40at John Paul College.
00:42One minute I'm getting 15, the next I'm getting 19, so like, maybe, maybe not.
00:46Oh, it gave me 29, that same one.
00:48Really?
00:49I've been told my whole life I look like about four years younger than what I actually am.
00:53I'm getting, yeah, 23, upwards of 23.
00:56On all the tests?
00:57On majority, yeah.
00:5819, 37, 26, and I think it was 23 as well.
01:03Okay, wow.
01:04So, yeah, it's pretty inconsistent.
01:0613.
01:0713.
01:08I just got 13.
01:09Went from 15 to 40 to 13.
01:12You're getting younger by the way.
01:14Younger.
01:15Okay, so there was a lot of variation there amongst those ages.
01:20Just how heavily does the trial actually depend on this tech?
01:25So it's just one of a number of methods.
01:28Like, facial scanning isn't the only tool, the only way that social media companies will
01:34have to check our ages in six months' time when this ban comes in.
01:38But it is potentially load-bearing or, you know, quite important at least because, you know, we've seen it being one of the main tools that's been tested in classrooms over the last four months.
01:52And, you know, the results are impressive by some measures in the sense that this technology has come a long way, but, you know, you could argue that it hasn't come quite far enough.
02:05You know, 18 months is a pretty big margin of error when you're talking about a hard 16-year cutoff for teenagers.
02:16So some experts are saying that this is perhaps cause for the government to consider, to, you know, look at whether or not the tech is going to be up to scratch by the time this ban comes in.
02:32Some experts say that the ban is not viable.
02:36We spoke to Professor Lisa Given about this.
02:39She's a professor of information sciences at RMIT University.
02:43And she says, really, Australians should manage their expectations about what this legislation, what the ban is able to achieve.
02:50Of age.
02:51I think parents are definitely headed for a rude shock in terms of what this legislation will actually deliver to them.
02:58So given these early results, can the social media ban still work?
03:05Look, tellingly, the age verification companies themselves say that they're not surprised by these results.
03:13They say facial age estimation was never meant to be, you know, the decisive tool.
03:20They say the ban can still work.
03:22They, you know, the system they imagine, and I think the system a lot of people are imagining, is one similar to what you see in bottle shops, right?
03:32Where perhaps, you know, someone's appearance in this case, you know, facial age estimation could be the first hurdle.
03:39And then, you know, if you're not seen to be of a certain age, whether that is 21 or 25 or something like that, if you're near enough to 16, you then go to a second method of verification.
03:50And there are lots of other ways to do that.
03:53But, you know, the difficulty there is that it does start to get messy.
03:56You know, perhaps you don't have ID handy to provide, or perhaps you're not comfortable providing it.
04:01Maybe, you know, you're too young to have a driver's license.
04:06You know, maybe you're 16, you don't have one yet.
04:08There are, you know, it starts to get a bit tricky.
04:11But that is one system that could kind of preserve the integrity of it, even in the face of these accuracy issues.
04:17We don't know exactly how the ban is going to work yet.
04:20The government's going to take advice from the eSafety Commissioner about that and make a plan in the next few months
04:26and tell the social media companies what they're going to have to do to make this work.
04:30But, yeah, the clock is ticking.
04:32We've got less than six months before this ban is theoretically up and running.
