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November 29, 2024 - 2:00pm
Australia’s parliament has just passed a law which aims to do what no other government has yet managed: stop children under 16 from using social media. The law, which will come into effect late next year, will rely on age-verification technology to impose the restrictions, and will make platforms liable for fines of up to £25million if they do not stop children from creating accounts.
There are many thorny questions surrounding the new law. How will the age limit actually work and be enforced in practice? Will the ban simply send children to more unregulated spaces on the internet? How will the government deal with concerns around privacy and data? And has the bill been rushed through too quickly? Some have advised that the digital duty of care should fall to social media companies instead, or that the focus should be on education now that the online and offline worlds are so inextricable.
Interestingly, though, these oppositions do not seem to be coming from young people. According to a Deloitte report, Australian members of Generation Z are as supportive, if not more, of social media age restrictions compared to other generations. Of the Gen Zs surveyed, 91% agreed that there should be stronger restrictions on children’s access to social media, and over a third supported an outright ban.
Another report by The New York Times paints a similar picture for American young people: 45% said they would not allow their own child to have a smartphone before 14, while 57% believed that parents should restrict their child’s access before high school. A surprising number of respondents said that they wished social media platforms had never been invented, including Instagram (34%), Snapchat (43%), TikTok (47%) and X/Twitter (50%).
These findings may be expected given that Gen Z is uniquely attuned to — and affected by — the mental health impacts of social media use. Yet they nonetheless prove that young people want freedom from as well as freedom to. When I speak to my students, they frequently tell me that they actually feel a tangible sense of relief when their phones are taken away, or that they wish nobody had a smartphone because the only reason they have one is the fear of missing out.
Last year, I conducted a phone use survey with some of my sixth form students, and at the end I asked them if there was anything they wished teachers knew or understood about social media. Many wrote about how it had affected their attention span, or how the algorithm had led them to places they had never intended to go, but one student wrote this particular insight:
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SubscribeThe first time I can actually starting agreeing with an approach adopted by the police state of Australia.
You could argue this police state have decided to shield young people from the progressive nonsense they originally propagated!
Might be the teeniest weeniest exaggeration of Australian law!
Listen I’m not a fan of social media. I don’t let my own kids have it. But the problem is no one is clear on what “social media” is, often times “social media” seems to be code for “companies I dislike”.
We can all agree twitter is social media, but what about unherd? After all I can leave comment and interact with others socially. Does that make it social media? What about reddit or 4chan? What if I have a blogging platform that lets people blog is that social media?
Mark my words this had everything to do with the government being able to tie your online identity to your real identity by requiring verification anytime you use the Internet all smuggled under the guise of “think of the children”.
You are right in your concerns, but the problem is that your opinion is not shared by most women. In more or less comfortable conditions, they immediately become enemies of progress and evolution.
This is a legit concern. How do we prove we’re an adult? Digital ID? I support the idea of restricting kids on social media, but this is a legit question – one that was not addressed under the legislation.
* Unherd, based on “not the herd”
Edit noted.