Australia is headed for a potentially prohibitive model that seeks to see children barred from accessing social media, especially Instagram and TikTok, due to their effects on their physical and mental health. Australian PM Anthony Albanese said on Tuesday that the government will conduct an age verification test in several months, which will lead to the enactment of legislation to implement the ban.
The new law will likely provide a lower age limit, which will be between 14 and 16 years. Albanese stated that parenting concerns have become extremely vulnerable, besides noting that many parents are “worried sick” and feel that they are “working without a map.”
The Liberal Party’s leader, Peter Dutton, who is also the Australian opposition leader, has advocated in the past for the banning of social media, especially for those under the age of sixteen.
This is in tandem with other global markets, such as China and France, which have formulated laws restricting social media during some of their hours in a day and various American states. These measures are intended to prevent certain threats that people have raised over the use of social media, such as cyberbullying and skinny/image postings worldwide.
However, skeptics have expressed concerns about such a ban, opining that it would suppress youths ‘ freedom of speech and invade their privacy. Daniel Angus, a professor of digital communication at Queensland University of Technology, has qualified the proposed ban as reckless, populist, and misguided.
Angus also added that the ban could mean that the major online platforms will never have to be held accountable for improving content quality, pointing out that it only puts up a wall instead of recognizing the problems that are already being experienced on their sites.
