Australia is the first country in the world to significantly crack down on cell phone use by young people, and many parents and governments in many other countries are watching carefully.
Australia’s recent amendment to its “Online Safety Act” will ban under-16s from social media from next year. AND, for once, legislators have actually included penalties for violations of the law rather than leaving the responsibility for implementation to someone else – a perennial complaint of mine! Under the new Australian law, platforms that fail to take “reasonable steps” to verify the age of users can be fined up to A$50 million (US$32 million) – a significant penalty under any circumstances.
The Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, stated, as he announced the new law, that “The whole world is watching”. For once, Australia’s two major parties are united their support for this measure, and Australians – at least the adults – are overwhelmingly in favor of it. Mr. Albanese’s government believes that social media is so bad for adolescent health that it should be treated no differently than smoking, a habit on which Australia also led a crackdown.
Predictably, there has been a multitude of negative responses to this new law, ranging from child-welfare organisations who see it as restricting social interactions, human rights advocates, and the media platforms, as well, of course, from adolescents themselves.
Apart from the different lobbying groups, there are the technical issues of implementing such a ban, including anticipating the various ways in which people will try and bypass the law, both of which are major problems. However, with three-quarters of Australian adults overwhelmingly supporting the measure, it will be difficult to stop full implementation, whoever you are.
Most people, including me, don’t know that the U.S. COPPA law of 1998, enacted to protect children’s online privacy, was partially designed to make social media off-limits to under-13-year-olds. That law included no penalties and has been widely ignored, and feebly enforced. The same is true in other countries; OFCOM, the U.K.’s communications regulator report that 22% of the country’s social media users aged between 8 and 17 use an adult’s date of birth. The Australian attempt is different, and thus is attracting worldwide attention.
Issues I had not thought of include identification of a child’s age; they do not have driving licenses and credit cards (in their names). However, there is a technology that uses machine learning to estimate age through selfies. That technology has been used in Australia and elsewhere to accurately predict a child’s age with an error of about a year. Ironically, the technology has greater difficulty with children who have darker skins – that accuracy has a error rating of a year and a half.
Then there is deciding how broad the ban should be; You-tube is exempt because of its educational value and, currently video games are also exempt, although some video games now have a “chat” component, which can be considered as social media. The implementation will be complicated and evolving, as suppliers and users figure out how to evade the law – governments are generally not good at this sort of consistent attention and change except, perhaps, in the area of national defense.
Another major issue will be deciding who will be the enforcer of the law. Again, a decision that is bound to be fraught with controversy.
Finally, no-one has any idea how such a ban on children’s use of social media will affect addiction rates when they are adults – a major concern for the future of social media platforms.
Australia has taken a bold step towards controlling the epidemic of social media use by children. No other country has yet had the guts/political will to even try in any meaningful way. As Anthony Albanese said, “The world is watching”.
