In September 2024, the Federal Government announced its intention to introduce legislation to Parliament to set a ‘minimum age’ for social media users in Australia. The proposed changes, which drew bipartisan support, would see any Australian under the age of 16 effectively banned from social media, whether or not they already have an existing account or parental consent.
When these changes were first mooted nearly 12 months ago, the premise of social media being banned for under 16’s struck many as Government overreach. But, a year later, the world is arguably in a much different place. Public discourse and hate speech runs rampant online, mischief and misinformation pervades on social media, and addictive, short-form content has distorted the social and geopolitical landscape virtually beyond recognition.
Today, as the Albanese Government agenda to regulate social media nears fruition, politicians, researchers, and parents worldwide have echoed support for the ban, which will put the onus on the social media giants to take “reasonable steps” to remove any accounts of users under 16 and responsibly screen the age of would-be users signing up. The responsibility on enforcing the new restrictions will fall, not onto parents as previously thought, but will instead lie with the Office of the eSafety Commissioner, whose job it will be to ensure all reasonable steps are being taken by the platforms themselves. The Commissioner’s office has already stated there will be no excuse for non-compliance, noting fines of up to $49.5 million may be applicable.
To many nervous parents around the world this may come as somewhat welcome news, and it will be interesting to see how the member nations of the UN embrace the groundbreaking proposal when presented by Anthony Albanese himself. In recent decades, the social media industry has grown exponentially and, until now, it has operated largely free of any independent regulation. So, in many ways, this has the potential to be a quantum leap.
However, previous attempts at this type of regulation have gone awfully awry. For example, we all remember when the government tried to regulate Meta, requiring it to share its advertising revenue for news articles under the News Media Bargaining Code. That step resulted in social media platforms retaliating and banning all news-related content in Australia for a period, and denying critical information to many of this country’s users.
But the current initiative, while risky, is aimed at minimising the negative effect that social media is having on children. A survey conducted by the Headspace National Youth Mental Health Survey in 2020 stated that 57% of young people believed their mental health was declining, with 42% citing social media as the cause. This was a substantial increase from the survey results in 2018, where only 37% of young people cited social media as the cause of their declining mental health, prompting Headspace to call on the government to address the issue.
For their part, the social media companies are often found sprouting the record profits they make off their algorithms, quietly leaving aside how they target and tailor content to children. Specifically, in 2022:
- YouTube generated $959 million from children aged 0-12 and $1.2 billion from teenagers aged 13-17.
- Instagram generated $801.1 million from children aged 0-12 and $4 billion from teenagers aged 13-17.
- Facebook generated $137.2 million from children aged 0-12.
- Tik Tok generated $2 billion from teenagers aged 13-17.
The changes are due to come into effect from 10 December 2025 and are expected to cover platforms such as Tik Tok, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, X and YouTube, with many speculating the legislation will be enforced against any platform with a ‘chat’ functionality, so as to include gaming services like PlayStation, Xbox, and the popular children’s website, Roblox.
There have been vocal concerns by the Senate about the impact such quick changes will have on the industry, as well as the “rushed” and “imprecise” nature of the legislation, but it is hard to say how this will all play out in practically. Only time will tell.
But with radical views and misinformation becoming more pervasive by the minute in online echo-chambers like X and Instagram, the Government’s proposal, while not a perfect solution, is surely a step forward.
