Australia Plans Age Limit To Ban Children From Social Media

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Agence France-Presse: Australia will ban children from using social media with a minimum age limit as high as 16, the prime minister said Tuesday, vowing to get kids off their devices and 'onto the footy fields.' Federal legislation to keep children off social media will be introduced this year, Anthony Albanese said, describing the impact of the sites on young people as a 'scourge.' The minimum age for children to log into sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok has not been decided but is expected to be between 14 and 16 years, Albanese said. The prime minister said his own preference would be a block on users aged below 16. An age verification trial to test various approaches is being conducted over the coming months, the centre-left leader said.

It is not even clear that the technology exists to reliably enforce such bans, said the University of Melbourne's associate professor in computing and information technology, Toby Murray. 'The government is currently trialling age assurance technology. But we already know that present age verification methods are unreliable, too easy to circumvent, or risk user privacy,' he said. But the prime minister said parents expected a response to online bullying and the access social media gave to harmful material. 'These social media companies think they're above everyone,' he told a radio interviewer. 'Well, they have a social responsibility and at the moment, they're not exercising it. And we're determined to make sure that they do,' he said.

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