Australia makes smart social media move

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/12/2024 (631 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Well, at least it will spark some discussion on social media …

Moving remarkably quickly — taking just a week — the Australian government has passed legislation requiring social media giants to keep people under 16 from having accounts on their sites.

And it’s a law with a hefty penalty — companies like Facebook, TikTok and Instagram will now face fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars (roughly C$54 million) for systemically failing to keep kids under 16 off their platforms.

And the legislation isn’t the only thing that’s moving quickly — social media companies will have just one year to develop and implement new methods to stop underage users.

The law itself is only some 13 pages long, and consists primarily of amendments to Australia’s existing Online Safety Act, passed in 2021. But the crux of it is simple enough, spelling out a blunt legal requirement: “There are age restrictions for certain social media platforms. A provider of such a platform must take reasonable steps to prevent children who have not reached a minimum age from having accounts.”

It’s the first age ban for social media that’s been put into place in the world, and there are clear questions about whether it will even work: will all Australian social media account holders somehow have to prove their age in the coming year? Are social media sites capable of collecting and storing such data safely? As with many other social ills, by setting up online bans, aren’t we simply making illicit access more interesting to children?

The list of doubts goes on.

There are good reasons for legislative rules protecting children — we have age limits for driving, for drinking, for smoking, and for marijuana use, all put in place to protect youth who have not fully reached adulthood and may not make reasonable and mature decisions.

It’s completely understandable why we might want to protect them from accessing the cesspools of social media as well.

Not only that: online platforms have failed to successfully act on the use of their platforms to coerce children into sharing intimate images, have opened a pipeline to pornography to youth, and have provided schoolyard bullies with the ability to go into their victims’ homes to persecute them virtually endlessly.

Social media is in no way a safe space for youth, and it’s not only parents who have a responsibility to protect children from harm.

Make no mistake: social media has led children to their deaths by putting them in situations that they can see no way out of — this is not an academic exercise, it is a life and safety issue.

The biggest question is whether the blunt force approach delivered by the Australian politicians will actually work. So far, the response to the legislation has been primarily to cite all the reasons why a broad-based, untested ban might fail. There is a saying by Voltaire that “the perfect is the enemy of the good.” While we search for the perfect solution, we ignore workable but imperfect efforts to address an issue.

What’s left out of this equation is there are real harms that have to be addressed, and the social media firms involved don’t seem to be more than occasionally interested in addressing the harms their businesses cause.

It comes down to this: if it doesn’t work, what method can we find to limit the harm — particularly to children — of social media platforms that have grown so large they essentially make their own rules about how they want to conduct their business?

Australia may not have the solution. But a solution has to be found.