The Albanese Labor Government will introduce legislation this year to enforce a minimum age for access to social media and other relevant digital platforms.
Federal legislation will be informed by engagement with States and Territories through National Cabinet and draw upon recent work by former Chief Justice, Robert French. The minimum age is yet to be determined until the government’s trial of age verification technology is completed.
Amanda Grimbly, our child online safety expert, has shared her thoughts on the ban.
“WACSS welcomes the heightened media attention of the harms of social media on our children and young people and the ongoing discussion around tech and social media for our kids. But is it the right move?
If you have attended one our cyber parent workshops, our focus has and will continue to be encouraging parents and safe adults to be engaged with children’s online experiences, both the positive and not so positive. The Internet and related technology can be an enriching and educative experience for children, but it can also be fraught with dangerous content and people.
Whilst the federal government’s plan to legislate a social media ban for children is a reaction to the understanding of these dangers, we also acknowledge that the weight of responsibility of adults and children to ensure their own safety is a hefty and unfair burden, when tech companies do not prioritise safety over financial gain.
We strongly believe that this requires a more nuanced, ‘safety by design’ regulation which would consider:
- Addressing algorithmic design which recommends content and can narrow down the focus to more extreme and harmful content.
- Automatic privacy settings that default to the highest level protection for children.
- Safe age verification procedures that does not prove a risk of breach of privacy and personal data.
- Privacy of children’s personal data not being utilised by tech companies for marketing and advertising.
- Child friendly reporting mechanisms and more stringent responses to reporting of content by kids.
- Ongoing consultation with experts in the field such as the eSafety Commissioner and Trusted eSafety Providers.
- Greater world wide collaboration to develop regulation instead of tech companies self regulating.
We always strongly encourage children and young people to reach out to safe adults for help when encountering harms online. We communicate that we want them to have valuable and engaging experiences with tech. We would prefer to see the harmful content and harmful people removed from the internet than have children have to face the consequences.”