Key Points
- Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is set to introduce legislation setting a minimum age for accessing social media.
- The legislation is expected to ban children under the age of 14, with parental consent required for 14- and 15-year-olds.
- Some experts are critical of the measure, saying the ban on social media will not make the online world safer.
Imposing a social media ban is neither good nor bad because it will have both positive and negative effects, some experts say. But they say the most dangerous course of action is to do nothing at all.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced that the federal government will introduce legislation by the end of 2024 to enforce a minimum age for accessing social media.
A minimum age has yet to be established, but a trial is being conducted to verify the age and explore ways to meet it. A possible age limit is also being considered, taking into account children aged 14 to 16.
“This is a plague,” he told ABC News on Tuesday.
Young Australians are often bullied online and given access to material that can cause social harm and lead to mental health problems, the Prime Minister said.
Albanese told FM radio presenters Fitzy and Wippa on Tuesday that his “personal opinion” is that the minimum age should be set at 16.
“But I want to make sure we don’t end up in different states with different systems,” he said.
“We want a national approach to a problem that is a national problem.”
Anthony Albanese describes social media as a ‘plague’. Source: MONKEY
The federal opposition supports the push for age limits on social media, with the premiers of Victoria and South Australia also backing the push to introduce their own controls.
But some experts and says it will not make the online world any safer.
Social media ban for children is ‘reckless’ and a ‘band-aid solution’
According to Carly Dober, executive director of the Australian Association of Psychologists, a ban would distract from the real issues.
“It’s a sticking plaster on a very complicated and deep-rooted problem,” she told the Australian Associated Press.
“The fundamental issues surrounding the insecurity of the Internet for people have not changed.
“There is still hate speech and deeply misogynistic, deeply racist and deeply sexist content online… [children will] are still being targeted with highly sophisticated advertisements that are purely aimed at getting them to buy various products and services.”
New research from the ANU shows that regular use of social media is negatively impacting the life satisfaction of Year 10 and 11 students across Australia. Source: Getty / Mask
It also ignores the benefits that online spaces can offer to young people, especially those from marginalized communities.
“LGBTQI people, refugee youth, disabled youth — they find community in different places when their experiences in school or in their communities aren’t so welcoming,” Dober said.
“What happens to the young people who are then excluded from their valuable online communities?”
Daniel Angus, director of the digital media research centre at the Queensland University of Technology, described the proposal as a “reckless decision”.
“[It] “This can cause serious harm by excluding young people from meaningful, healthy participation in the digital world, potentially pushing them into lower-quality online spaces and removing an important means of social connection,” Angus wrote on LinkedIn.
“It also means that very large online platforms do not have to intervene in implementing necessary reforms to the quality of content on their platforms, because this only creates a barrier rather than improving the content on the other side.”
A ban ‘neither good nor bad’
Other experts say arguments against a ban — that it would exempt tech giants from the need to reform platforms, that it wouldn’t teach young people how to use social media responsibly, or that it would remove an important connection for marginalized youth — are not reasons not to implement a ban.
“You can walk and chew gum at the same time,” Professor Ben Edwards, from the ANU’s Centre for Social Policy Research, told SBS News.
“A ban is not good or bad; it’s how you implement it that matters. Yes, we need to help and train young people to use social media responsibly. Yes, we need to have higher expectations of social media companies. But yes, we should also try to implement something that can have positive benefits, but then keep a close eye on the implications of that for our children and young people.”
New research from the ANU shows that regular use of social media is negatively impacting the life satisfaction of Year 10 and 11 pupils across the country.
TikTok, Reddit, and Twitch users who identified as male or female all had lower life satisfaction than users who did not use these platforms.
According to Anthony Albanese, social media is causing social harm and tech giants have a duty to protect young people. Source: MONKEY / Joel Carrett
The study found that non-binary students who regularly use social media reported the lowest levels of life satisfaction. However, those who use X reported higher levels of life satisfaction. This may be because those who use X experience a sense of community, said Edwards, who was also the lead researcher.
Dr Ferdi Botha, a senior researcher at the University of Melbourne’s Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, agrees that social media has both positive and negative consequences and that a ban is therefore desirable.
“Social media is a tool for connecting, but it is also a source of stress and psychological distress for people,” he told SBS News.
He said the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, which collects valuable information on economic and personal well-being from more than 17,000 Australians each year, found that there was an “increased prevalence of psychological distress” around 2010 and 2011, particularly in the 15 to 24 age group. This “coincides very closely with the rollout of social media platforms”.
Botha says a minority of the population, particularly marginalised groups, would be negatively affected by the ban, but that “the overwhelming consensus is that it would have a positive impact”.
‘We have lost so much’
According to Edwards, the most dangerous option when it comes to social media is to do nothing at all.
“If you look at how teenagers are functioning now, we’ve lost so much. A lot of the social interaction, the ability to talk to someone, to really interact outside of digital media communication, is much more limited now. It’s hard to manage and parents want to help. And this legislation would give them permission to say no.”
Edwards believes that a trial ban on social media for young people should include non-binary and neurodivergent individuals. It should also be closely monitored to assess both the positive and negative effects.
“If we do see adverse effects on certain groups in society, we need to consider what additional protective measures we can put in place to support these young people,” he said.
“This monitoring would give us much more robust information on which to base these policy decisions.
“And then we can decide whether this is the right thing for our society and our young people.”
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