Australia is the first nation to ban social media for under-16s.
Australia is the first nation to ban social media for under-16s.
On Wednesday, the lower house of the Australian parliament voted to pass legislation to ban social media for children under 16 years, and the Senate passed the bill on Friday.
Landmark legislation sees the Australian government committed to the novel step of child protection by banning social media for under sixteens.
It's still not entirely clear how the Australian government thinks they're actually going to enforce this.
Plenty of web services already require you to state your age to use them and I believe a large majority of users just coincidentally happen to be born on January 1st, 1900 as a result.
If they're expecting these tech companies to be gathering and storing peoples' government ID's, or something, somebody needs to carefully explain to them using small words why this is a monumentally stupid idea. Does something need to be done about social media addiction and the rampant sketchy behavior of the tech giants? Yes, probably. Is a blanket ban ever the actual solution to anything? No, very rarely.
It's just apparently all anyone can come up with when they've got government-brain.
They've set it up so it's a legal mess. The platforms aren't given any mechanism to actually perform verifications (no double blind id system, for example) but are legally on the hook for each and every under-16 on the platforms. A quote in the article suggests it should be the app stores verifying which is even more fucking stupid.
Well, I know how that would go if I were a globe-spanning social media giant. Given that the entirety of the Australian market is roughly the size of New York state (~26 vs ~20 million people), I would say, "Nah mate, we just won't do business in Oz anymore. Bye."
Vanishingly few business make a "New York only" version of their product because it's simply not worth it. Australia already suffers under this problem for a great deal of physical products. Ask any computer nerd about that, when trying to source parts and often video game titles as well. Shipping things to the Antipodes and/or dealing with Antipodean regulations is expensive, for an objectively low number of potential sales.
It would not surprise me to learn if it follows that Australia generates roughly 1.7% of the revenue for Facebook or whoever as, say, India. So in other words, bupkis.
The commissioner is supposed to come up with guidelines for what is a reasonable check, so we find out when they come up with it I guess đ¤ˇ
What will be interesting for sure is the difference of this approach vs. the porn approach in the southern US. In this case in Australia? Social media companies will tip toe any line they can because there is so much money to be made and they want every dollar.
PornHub? They just blocked access in 17 states instead of even trying to worry about age verification. They're still getting their users, but now they're coming over VPN.
https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/pornhub-florida-vpn-google-searches-skyrocket/
And, Pornhub can probably play the waiting game in those states as well. Enough people in those places will probably get pissed off enough eventually to pressure their legislators into walking those laws back. It might just take a year or two. I imagine everyone involved already knows, but the idiots who wrote the laws need to wait for the headlines to cool off a bit before they can backpedal, in order to save face.
I imagine Facebook or someone of similar size could do the same in Aus. All they have to do is refuse to serve anything to Aussie IP addresses except a message that says, "Sorry, we can't serve your country anymore because of a law passed by [legislator.] Remember, this is all his fault."
Politicians infamously do not give a flying fuck about the opinions of minors, but if they piss everyone else off too the people responsible will either be out on their ears next election or buried under an avalanche of nasty letters from their 40-and-up constituency.
I recently switched from 1 January 1900 to 1 January 2000. It feels good to be young again.
itâs still not entirely clear how the Australian government thinks theyâre actually going to enforce this.
"Awww shucks everyone, looks like we don't get to have internet privacy after all. Don't worry, it's FOR THE CHILDREN."
Itâs still not entirely clear how the Australian government thinks theyâre actually going to enforce this.
<socialMediaOperators> Since identity verification checks for minors is an absolute nightmare security scenario we are deciding to pull all operations out of Australia.
It boggles the mind how many times a higher up comes up with some idea (in any context, not just politicians), and never stops to answer the question: "how is this going to work?".
She'll be right mate, don't worry about it đŚđş
Magic. That is the only way they can enforce this drivel.
The plan is their mygov id system and this has been years in the making.
Australian governments (both lib and labor) are on board with this and have been salivating over the idea of an internet more locked down than South Koreaâs.
Now do 16+
Iâd prefer 17+. I think it would be fun to have only 1 year on social media.
Right as they reach peak awkward jagoff.
đ
It has been 3 hours as of this comment, and Spitzspot has yet to delete their account. I guess they don't really believe what they say.
I'm not Australian
Oh those poor kids.
I remember when we banned porn for the under 18s and now nobody under 18 can access porn.
This is my favorite argument against government regulation.
Anything not foolproof definitely isn't worth doing at all.
Theres a scale of influence, with a big difference between foolproof and entirely unenforceable.
In this case, it's effectively unenforceable, so what's the point in wasting time and effort drafting something that won't actually make any difference?
How is this a good argument? The law from the post being stupid notwithstanding, by this logic, why bother making any regulations or laws at all if someone, somewhere is gonna break it.
Are you aware of how much of society is held together with the duct tape of social obligation and the honestly system? Yes we have audits, and enforcement, but honestly in a health society, the vast majority is self-imposed.
This is a really poor argument against government regulation, is all I'm saying.
So where exactly are kids supposed to go? People will go on about "they should just go outside" but kids have literally had the cops called on them for the crime of walking around their own neighborhood "unsupervised". I've seen calls to ban kids from all sorts of places - planes, theme parks, restaurants, libraries. I've seen these "mosquito" things put up to drive kids away from public places. Kids are spending all their time on social media because they have nowhere else to go.
I think this perspective (that teens have nothing else in their lives other than social media) is harmful. I don't understand why they're not able to do the same things teens did before social media......
Police being called on harmless teenagers by the same busybodies over and over again kind of sorts itself out after awhile.
This is the travel range for kids in the UK by generation. Such a map would be far worse in the US or Australia
They can't do the same things teenagers did before because the world has been growing more and more hostile to teenagers. More places have banned kids. We have these mosquito things making noises to drive teenagers away. It's become more difficult to get around without a car. Parents have become more helicoptery, not letting their kids out of the house. And "sorts itself out"? Here's what happens. Some asshole calls the cops on teenagers just hanging out. The cops, with nothing better to do than harass innocent people, show up and chase them away. Now those teenagers don't feel safe going back there, because they don't wanna get cops coming after them. Or maybe the cops don't stop at chasing the kids off! Maybe they get arrested for "loitering" or some nonsense. Maybe they get accused of dealing drugs because teenagers hanging around is strange and suspicious, and the cops love to frame innocent people. Cops getting called isn't some silly and frivilous thing.
So where exactly are kids supposed to go? People will go on about âthey should just go outsideâ but kids have literally had the cops called on them for the crime of walking around their own neighborhood âunsupervisedâ. Iâve seen calls to ban kids from all sorts of places - planes, theme parks, restaurants, libraries. Iâve seen these âmosquitoâ things put up to drive kids away from public places. Kids are spending all their time on social media because they have nowhere else to go.
Outside. It may take society a bit of time to adjust, just like it took a bit of time before kids not being outside became normal, but it will happen. Kids run around my town all the time unsupervised, nobody is calling the cops, and parents are looking out for each others kids. Just because some places have gone off the deep end doesn't mean everywhere has.
Social media is harming them in that case.
They will create their own places... which might not actually be desirable for the government lol
They should go the fuck outside, what you said isnt true at all. Also, kids arent buying their own phones and internet, the parents are.
I'm old enough to remember I spent my days riding my bike around town, exploring the woods, hanging out at friends' houses, going to the pizza place and hitting baseballs at the school field with my brothers.
Even excluding everything other than computers, you can still play games, talk to friends, code etc.
Hang on. Where I'm Australia have cops been called on kids walking around the neighbourhood? The kids around my neighbourhood go around on their bicycles, skateboard and play in the parks. A few of them graffiti and others put up ads to walk dogs for a fee.
That said, this law is dumb. Australia is so hostile to the tech industry.
Problem: Higher childhood depression rates linked to social media usage, social media caused disruption in education (like usage in schools), privacy violation of minors, etc.
An enforceable, common sense solution: Very strict privacy protection laws, that would end up protecting everybody, including minors. Better, kid friendly urban infrastructure like dedicated bike paths protected from car traffic, better pedestrian areas, parks and so on. Kids will get outside their house if there is a kid friendly outside. A greener, more human friendly outside where you can socialize with other humans would always be preferred over doom scrolling online. For the disruption in education issue, it is very education system dependent.
What solution these people came up with: Make it illegal for individuals under the age of 16 to create social media accounts. How do they enforce this? No idea. Does this solve any of the above problems? No. Is this performative? Yes.
Speaking from personal experience, social media was one of the most liberating tools for me as a kid. I lived in a shitty, conservative country and was gay. Social media told me that I wasn't disgusting. I was always more of a lurker than a poster, so I thankfully didn't really experience being contacted by groomers and so on. However, many of my friends who posted their images and stuff almost always got pedos in their DMs, so that's a very real issue.
I could ask my silly little questions related to astrophysics on Reddit and get really good answers. Noone around me irl was ever interested/able to talk about stuff like this. I could explore different political ideologies, get into related servers on Discord and learn more about this. None of this was possible without social media.
Banning social media outright is such a boomer move lol. Doing so isn't going to solve any real problems associated with childhood social media usage. It's just going to give the jackass parents complaining about this a false sense of security, when the kids still end up suffering.
Better, kid friendly urban infrastructure like dedicated bike paths protected from car traffic, better pedestrian areas, parks and so on. Kids will get outside their house if there is a kid friendly outside. A greener, more human friendly outside where you can socialize with other humans would always be preferred over doom scrolling online.
Good luck with that, people and politicians love cars, parking lots and highways, and the media is demonising kids as criminals.
Exactly, which is why they're doing performative shit like this
Well written!
This is a false dichotomy.
You can regulate social media platforms and have great infrastructure.
Your own childhood sounds tough, but advocating for social media as a way to mitigate shitty communities is a weird take.
Australia is the first nation to fail to ban social media for under 16s.
Based on what I've seen over the last few years, it's the over-16s that should probably be banned from social media.
Unenforcible Law.
Gotta require ID verifications and ban all VPNs in order to actually be enforcible.
Surely, the website owners would never sell your information, right? Right?
Banning the Three Letter Word is unenforceable too. If you ban Open*** and Wireguard - too bad, China has done that and people developed obfuscation methods. Even if you try to ban talking about them, they won't go extinct. If there's a supply, there's a demand.
Preach
Gotta require ID verifications
that's exactly what they are "evaluating" now along with "biometric (age and voice) estimation".
government, politicians and media are constructing a parallel reality for themselves.
The ID verification is the purpose. Keeping minors off is a smokescreen, tracking every citizen on social media is the real reason for this law.
Put it on the parents. That's enforceable, and the root of the problem..
What happens if an Australian kid starts running their own Pixelfed or Lemmy site?
My instance is in Australia, and the new laws affect social media like Lemmy. The hard part is that there apparently isn't much guidance on how to follow the law. Do you have to use ID? Is a location-specific popup making you state that you're 16+ enough? Nobody knows.
We are yet to see. My guess is they charge the kid for providing social media to an underaged user (themselves). Will be very interesting to watch ngl. Also idk how they gonna implement it cos i sure as shit aint handing over my id to the social media companies.
I'm not sure that a self hosted ActivityPub site with a single user could reasonably be called a social media site. I wonder how the law defines a social media site.
The problem is not teens accessing social media, theyâre just bored or donât know any better
The problem is what adults post on those social media.
If anything teens should have social media of their own, where no elder boomers are allowed
There was a German social network a few years ago that did exactly that (before Facebook was available in German)
They had SchĂźlerVZ for kids/teens, then they had StudiVZ for university students and finally they had MeinVZ for adults. The problem was, that they werenât interconnected at all apart from the option to move your account to the next platform. So if you were just starting to study but you still had friends that were in school, you couldât keep in touch with them.
In further news, millions of teenagers have become experts at vpns and bypassing online restrictions
Australia fighting the good fight to produce tech savvy youth
If only this applied to the parents as well... No more using your children online to make a buck as an influencer.
Now kids will be forced to hide being a victim of cyber-bullying from their parents. Great work!
If they don't have an online presence and neither do their peers, how would they be cyber bullied?
I'm sure bullying will go on, old school, in the streets, but cyber bullying is one of the things that will go away with this
I think this is great. There are about one or two generations worth of people that had social media while being kids and I think they should stop acting as if it's the end of the world if it would go away. I fully understand that you grew up with it and don't know any netter but believe you me: you can do without, you can survive without, you will be better without.
Go outside, touch grass, have fun, be a kid again.
A few years ago the Australian government spent an enormous amount of money on a proposed firewall to protect the children. After years of development they were ready to pilot test their white elephant, and discovered that, on average, the Australian 12 year old could bypass it in ten minutes.
It's unlikely that the government could even enforce an obstacle as robust as the "are you 18+" checkbox that porn sites opt in to. This new law will not have any influence on under 16s online presence.
If you think this is going to actually stop kids from getting on social media, I have a bridge to sell you.
All it's going to do is push kids to hide their social media apps, which they'll get either through a VPN or faking the ID check, which gives parents even less visibility into what's going on with their children online.
If they donât have an online presence and neither do their peers, how would they be cyber bullied?
Fun fact, I was called by my bullies on my parents landline and bullied when I was a kid in the 1980s.
Bullies are gonna bully - the method varies but never the motive.
I grew up before the internet dude. I just donât underestimate the cleverness and resourcefulness of young people.
If their parents are social media
Absolute stupidity and a waste of taxpayers' money spending so much time on this nonsense.
These incompetent morons are pretty much guaranteeing that they will lose the next election. In the middle of a housing and inflation crisis this is what these fuckheads decided was important.
I loathe the opposition, but it's hard to defend the sheer incompetence the Labor Party has displayed their entire term.
With great sadness I have to agree with you.
It's just one shit show after another. Voice to parliament, live export ban, and now this. Meanwhile Australians are being ground into the dust by price gouging corporations and interest rate hikes.
That said I am in support of this legislation, but it's just not enough.
I'm just waiting until they remember why borders are a thing that exists.
The Australian government is to cowardly to regulate social media to be healthy for all ages.
Yes.
Fair dinkem mate. How are they gonna regulate this?
Dinkum
Cheese mate
They need them to get indoctrinated in the public education system first.
All of a sudden their test scores start going through the roof.
That would be a bad thing. In Australia, you want your test scores to go through the floor.
Attention span >3 minutes would be something already.
Are they still allowed on Lemmy?
Australian legislators probably don't even know that Lemmy exists.
If the law was well made, it wouldnât applly to websites under a certain threshold of active users.
I mean you canât expect octopusforums.co with 40 cephalopod enthusiasts to ID check australians can you.
Yeah, I hear they're not allowed to watch porn until 18 either and that works flawlessly.
Beyond questions of implementation this to me sounds like maybe we're replacing Instagram with Fortnite, but it sure will be interesting to see how it plays out. I guess trying something is better than trying nothing.
this isn't for the safety of kids; it's to eliminate the ability for queer kids to find a community.
No offence but thatâs shortsighted to be generous. I feel like half of lemmy will carry on about social media being cancer, the frequent articles citing negative effects of SM on mental health and the fact that multiple social media companies are accused of propagating misinformation (Zuckerberg face sure is in lemmy a lot lately for some reason). Like Zuck has all but greenlit harassing lgbt+ people on FB and the SM ban is to stop gay kids finding a community? Please. Corporate SM is a blight and before someone says lemmy/reddit check the mod logs or the fact that lemmy only got CSAM under control relatively recently before suggesting itâs fine for kids.
Besides, LGTB kids aren't the only ones who need the internet to find refuge
Are you Australian? That just feels like kind of a US centric lens to analyze this through, though you're right that loss of community is a byproduct.
Like, I'm not exactly happy with the Albanese government, but I would say that most negative LGBTQ things they have said or done have been cowardly attempts to avoid drama from the Liberals, not active bigotry
Should be left up to the parents.
I am so, so glad to see that at least one country in the world is willing to tackle this problem.
Also a little depressed that every comment thread about this law boils down to: "It's hard. Might as well not do it at all," especially from people who (rightly) think we need to ban guns every time a school gets shot up here in the US, which would be monumentally difficult socially but 100% needs to happen.
especially from people who (rightly) think we need to ban guns
Oh no, it's stupid....
Yeah I don't really understand the pile on.
Enforcement is not important in any way. If most kids are on social presently, then by making it illegal it just won't be a place for kids to congregate any more. What would be the point of lying about your age to create a facebook account if none of your friends are there.
Sure, some kids will still be on social, perhaps most kids will be, but there's no doubt in my mind that their usage will diminish dramatically. That's how public health works.
