In response to rising concerns about the effects of social media on children’s developing brains, a nationwide plan has been put in place to restrict access to the platforms until they reach a specific age.
Following such pronouncements from South Australia and Victoria, the Albanese government will tomorrow pledge to introduce legislation on a social media age limit.
More and more data is coming out about the harm that this technology can cause to youngsters, and some have compared it to the prospective limitations on cigarettes and alcohol.
The administration is committed to addressing the concerns of parents, according to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Technology is evolving at a rapid pace, and we are aware of this.
“We have to do all we can,” he emphasised, acknowledging that no government can possibly shield every child from every danger.
“This is causing extreme anxiety among parents.
No previous generation has ever experienced this kind of difficulty, so we know they’re navigating blind.
The government is testing age assurance technology with the hope of using it to set a limit between 13 and 16 years old, but no such limit has been officially announced.
The majority of major social media platforms do not allow users under the age of 13, however these limits are easily circumvented.
The South African government commissioned a report from former High Court Chief Justice Robert French, who was issued yesterday, and the government announced that the law would be worked on in national cabinet.
“The safety and mental and physical health of our young people is paramount,” stated Albanese.Some parents would prefer that their children play football instead of on their phones.
Oh, I completely agree. “We are taking this action because enough is enough.”
Federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton earlier this year urged for bipartisan support to impose an age limit, while South African Premier Peter Malinauskas brought up the matter at a national cabinet meeting last week before unveiling his state’s proposal.
“It’s inconceivable you would allow your 13-year-old to go down to a park and start mingling with any random person who comes by, or you would have a magazine on the table with all sorts of explicit content in it and you would allow your kid to flick through that content,” Dutton said during a June press conference.
“There’s a lot we can do and the technology is trending in our favour to make sure we can deal with the scale of the problem.”
In order to enforce the prohibition, Malinauskas assured tonight that he would cooperate closely with the US authorities.
“The evidence shows early access to addictive social media is causing our kids harm,” according to him.
Tobacco and alcohol are analogous.
A government must take action when a product or service endangers children. Labour has set aside $6.5 million in the budget to test out age verification technology.
They think it could help restrict kids’ access to pornographic content online on social media.
Following this week’s consultation with parents, youth, academics, and the platforms themselves, testing of the actual technology will commence, following research conducted by the Australian Institute of Family Studies.
It is not apparent how the government would implement the age restrictions; nevertheless, experts have proposed several potential solutions, including users self-reporting, parental agreement, and age estimation using appearance or behaviour.
“Unfortunately, many of these approaches raise significant privacy concerns for users, not least because a third party would be handling their ID documents and other personal data,” written Lisa M. Given, a professor of information sciences at RMIT University, in an earlier article for The Conversation.
