Australia is proposing to ban social media use for individuals under 16, aiming to protect young people from online harms, but the feasibility and effectiveness of such a ban are heavily debated due to enforcement challenges and the integral role of social media in teen life.
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Hello, I'm Lucy Hockings from the BBC World Service. This is The Global Story.
Today: Are teens in Australia about to get kicked off social media?
Parents across the world know this predicament.
Social media networks can be a huge part of teenage life.
A place to speak to friends and join communities.
But it's also a place where harmful content can repeatedly impact young people.
So how can we keep our teens safe on these platforms?
In today's episode, Australia wants to ban teens under the age of 16
from using social media networks. But will it work?
With me today is the BBC's cyber correspondent Joe Tidy
and our Australia correspondent joining us from Sydney, Katy Watson.
Hi to you both. Hi!
Joe, I think because I have teenagers that social media is a bit
like a runaway train in a land I've never been to,
and I just really want the train to pull over and give me a bit of a break.
It is a constant topic of conversation, and in my house.
Is that because the kids want to be on there all the time?
They're saying, give me my phone late at night and that kind of thing?
The kids want to be on there all the time.
That is where they're talking to their friends.
That's where they're making plans, making arrangements,
everything from a sports practice to meeting up, you know, to socialising.
It's all happening on social media. It's no surprise, though, is it,
because these platforms have become the biggest companies in the world
because of how successful they are. They know how to keep us on the platform.
They've got very, very specific and very sophisticated
algorithms that know that if you dwell on a picture
oh, you might like that kind of content, let's give you more of that.
They know that, for example, when you get a like, it feels good,
or when you get a message, it makes you feel loved.
So it's no surprise, is it, that young people, even more so than us,
are addicted to social media.
And what about your kids, Katy? They're a bit smaller,
but has it made you think about what you're going to do
about social media as they grow up?
I think I'm in the privileged situation of watching everybody with slightly older kids.
My eldest is eight and so I can see everybody else who've got,
you know, early teens panicking and I can take a view
or certainly start debating and discussing it with my partner, I think.
Uh, no, none of them are on social media.
They sometimes look at what I do.
Um, but really, um, I'm in a probably a good place right now to kind of...
But I've got to make decisions and I've got to have that kind
of authority of what my plan is. And at the moment,
I'm still formulating that one.
Have you formulated a strategy with yours, Joe?
They're small too. Yeah. My eldest is ten today.
I've got two others who are younger, so I'm in the same position, really.
I'm waiting to have those conversations.
Luckily, they're not happening yet,
and my boy is obsessed with football and likes to be outside
and loves gaming.
I have to restrict the gaming, but phones, social media?
I'm not there yet. So any advice from you would be great!
Okay, I've got lots of it! But let's have a look
at what Australia is proposing.
This is about protecting young people, not punishing or isolating them,
and letting parents know we're in their corner
when it comes to supporting their children's health and wellbeing.
Not that many teens are actually on Facebook, I have to say,
but it's about protecting young people from the harms of social media.
Katy, tell us a little bit more about what
the Australian government is saying and what they're planning.
This has made huge waves in Australia because of the age 16,
you know, that was a seen as a high age, a big discussion about
whether, you know, that was even going to be feasible.
And what the main thing is, is that parents aren't going to be penalised.
Neither are any teens who slip through the net and get social media accounts.
But effectively there will be no exceptions.
Not even if parents agree and say that they want their kids,
they're okay with their kids having a social media, um,
social media account, that they can't do that.
But the onus will be on the companies and the platforms
to come up with ways of making sure that those under 16s are kept safe.
And this is the thing. At the moment, it is a legal framework.
So, you know, the legislation is passing,
but it's not clear exactly how it's going to be implemented.
And it will still have a year
from the legislation passing to coming up with
a solution on how it's going to work. And a year at least. That can be negotiated.
So it's a big process, and there's lots and lots
of question marks about how it's going to work in practice.
How it's going to work was the big question I had when I heard about it,
because keeping your kid
off social media, if they really want to be on there,
aside from actually taking the device away from them,
could prove almost impossible. Has the government got some suggestions
about how you're actually going to stop kids from logging on.
There's discussions about age verification. How would that work?
Will that mean everybody has to upload their ID,
whether or not they're under 16? There's so many question marks.
And the other thing is, is that messaging services,
gaming sites, none of those are going to be restricted.
Some sites, for example, that, um, you would access for health
or education purposes, they won't be restricted.
And I spoke to, you know, one young, uh, influencer who was just like,
it's just a bunch of old people who are making up rules
for young people who who know far more about it.
Just angry old people like, 'Ah, ban social media.'
But now this is becoming a threat.
This only affects me, not the people making this law. Not at all.
You're taking choices away from young people,
and these are choices that they have grown up with,
that they understand, that they navigate quicker and better.
It's not really good for communities and stuff
because some people need to have communities online.
Honestly, I think it's a good thing. There's a lot
of really terrible influences online, more so than good ones.
Joe, we're going to be talking a lot about teenagers as consumers of social media.
But teenagers are also wonderful creators of content when it comes
to some of these platforms as well. And that's had a big impact.
Yeah, I think the social networks want the kids on their platforms
because often, as you say, it's vibrant, it's creative.
Some of the best memes and GIFs and online trends
have come from very young people on these platforms.
And some of the most fun that you can have on the internet is on these
on these networks, for example, TikTok, you know, some
of the stuff that we saw on TikTok in the last couple of years.
The joke is that it takes three or four weeks for that to eventually end up
on Instagram, because it does start on these platforms
where kids populate and social networks know that,
and they want their creators to be young and have a long future
of building content that people are going to be interested in.
And what's interesting as well is that if you look at what's happening
in what some, including Mark Zuckerberg from Meta, will argue is
the next stage in our technological entertainment, the Metaverse.
So VR headsets, they've actually lowered the age.
They've now lowered it to ten in America and Canada.
And if you go on those platforms, you know, I feel very, very old now going
into some of these rooms and these experiences and horizon worlds
because they are... it's all kids there.
And that's where they see the future of these platforms being.
So you can see the kind of the strain
that the social networks and these companies are under.
If they somehow get rid of the children,
how are they going to get them into the social networks that are going
to help them create the next generation of content creators?
If you speak to parents around the world,
most would acknowledge that they're worried that
their teenagers are spending too much time on these social media platforms.
And that's concerning, particularly as we start to learn more
about the impact that that is having on them.
What are some of the things that actually do concern you when you look
at what some teams are consuming.
There's no denying that algorithms push people towards extremes.
We now know that. We've had 20 years of social networks,
and there's been so much research that's been done on it.
So, for example, if you look at, um, a macho type account, maybe you're going
to be given more of that, maybe it's going to lead you down a path of,
I don't know, misogyny or, um, you know, incel culture in some ways,
and particularly with, with young boys, we see that kind of thing.
Likewise with women more in particular,
we see if you look at, um, body image type imagery or videos or content
that will push you eventually down to potential issues of how you feel
about how you look and potentially eating disorders, that kind of thing.
We know those issues are there,
but then there's lots of other things that we're still not sure about.
So, for example, is there such thing as social media addiction?
Is there such thing as gaming addiction? There's a lot of this discussion.
A lot of these words are being bandied around right now about children being addicted.
I said it earlier, didn't I? Just off the cuff.
But there's no real evidence to say that those are actual real addictions.
There's a gaming addiction, uh, therapy centre in the UK that was opened
and that was very controversial because scientists
said, well actually, is it an addiction?
And there are other places, other research that says that actually social
networks are really good for children because it brings them together.
We mentioned earlier, Katy said about particularly if you're,
for example, LGBT, queer or trans,
you know, you need that kind of community, to find your people.
So the dangers of social media are there. Some of them we know about,
and there seems to be not enough happening to solve them.
And some are still kind of debated about whether
or not they're good or bad for you. And so do we know
or has research been done about what regular social media use does?
Because I think that'll be a lot of the concerns
that parents will be expressing is just about the daily use of social media
and how much time their kids are spending on social media.
Well, the research says that if everything else
in your life is stable and good,
then social media is good, because it's another way to socialise,
open up your world horizons, that kind of thing.
But when you add that into a situation where perhaps you haven't got a stable home life
or you're being bullied at school or something like that,
then it can just compound problems and make things worse.
There's no hard and fast rules that I've seen in research that says
if you spend more than two hours a day
as a teenager on social networks, you're going to have mental health problems.
There's nothing that concrete out there.
But the thing about all of this is, you only have to ask a parent
when you look at your kid absorbed in their phone for hours and hours a day,
perhaps starting to feel bad about how they look, or things like that.
And you feel like anecdotally it cannot be a good thing.
Or that it's preventing them from doing other things. Yeah.
The amount of time I hear parents say, 'Get outside, get a ball, go and play,
get off your phone, get off your phone!' You hear it time and time again.
Is there an argument that teenage years should also be
when teens are learning to navigate online spaces safely?
So if they get to 16 and they're in Australia
and they've got no experience of this. That that's a bit dangerous.
That's one of the arguments that we're hearing on this is
that if you're suddenly launched into the internet at the age of 16
and you haven't got much experience, would you know how to spot,
for example, AI imagery? The prevalence now
of models that are artificial intelligence created.
Would you be aware of that kind of thing because it's something that you haven't had experience of.
There was some research done by a university in the UK
about Chinese, not just social media bans, but
the bans of smartphones and devices, at a certain sort of time of night.
And they are saying that it's a good thing to take the devices away,
and then they can go out and they can play and
it's a less sedentary lifestyle, that kind of thing.
And they said that a 10% reduction
in screen time means ten more minutes of playing outside or something.
So they would argue, the researchers, that that kind of experience of playing
and socialising face to face makes up for a lack of technical knowledge,
for example.
Are these some of the arguments, Katy, that you're hearing,
particularly from parents, in Australia?
When, uh, the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, announced it back
in September, he said, um, we want people back on the footy fields,
uh, you know, out and doing things, you know,
like a kind of typical childhood.
And I spoke to one expert who said, but why?
That's such a kind of attitude that everybody's good at sport.
I mean, on a personal level, my son hates football,
He doesn't like, he's not into social media either.
But like, there's this assumption that childhood is the same
as it was when you were young. And that is that.
So that doesn't mean that you might not, you know, go out and enjoy a good walk.
And we all know that's really good for health as well.
But this idea that it's better to be in sport than it is to be online
is a huge assumption that everybody's sporty and liking that.
And we all know that there are plenty of kids in their youth
who hated being part of sports and team sports like that as well.
So if you spoke anecdotally to parents, especially parents, um,
of kind of similar age to my children,
the view is, oh, well, at least it kicks a can down the road
so that when our kids go, I want to have a social media account, we can go,
oh, you can't now because the government doesn't let you.
And also everyone's on the same playing fields.
You know, it's a level playing field.
So that it's not that some people are allowed to because their parents let
them and others don't. Legally, nobody's allowed to.
So there's a kind of initial, ah, well, great.
It's one extra tool. But then when you dig down
and certainly I've spoken to plenty of experts and I don't,
I haven't found one, like, tech expert who thinks it's a good thing.
So we've established that there's a problem.
The Australian government is trying to provide a solution.
This was the view of one online safety educator.
The big reason that I am pro-ban
is because we're having a conversation about it.
And if the collective total of world governments look at this
as a positive move and maybe they'll do it,
and that pressure goes back towards those companies or changes
in legislation in the US that also going to be a really positive thing.
So that's Kirra Pendergast.
She heads up an online safety education company in Australia.
She speaks to thousands of students every week.
But Joe, tell us a bit more about what the challenges are going to be
in banning under 16s in this way.
How practically difficult is it going to be?
Well, one thing I think we should sort of bear in mind here
is that you have to be 13 to be on these social networks,
but that doesn't stop under-13s going on right now.
So the issue is, you put in a 16 age limit. How is that enforced?
Because at the moment, of course, you go on to a TikTok or an Instagram
and you just say, oh, I'm 18 or 19 when you're not, very clearly,
and there's no checks or balances there.
It's just literally you put your date of birth in and they say,
you know, there you go. Ofcom, the Office of Communications here in the UK,
a survey they've done, says that one
in five children are lying about their age to get on social networks.
In fact, it's 22%. So a bit more than one in five.
So that goes to show that the current restrictions
of 13 just simply don't work.
So if you bring in a 16 or in France, they've been trying really,
really trying to get a 15 age limit going on there.
You have to then have the law in place.
And as Katy said, the onus in Australia will be
that the technology companies have to be the ones that check.
So how are they going to do that? Well, they could use,
for example, facial recognition systems where you scan your face and
it has a rough guess at your age, um,
which may or may not be accurate. What's really interesting in this
is that actually the ones that I've used are really accurate.
I was mucking around on TikTok a few months ago,
and there's a filter that you can use to guess your age,
and it got me exact and it got my wife exact.
But what's funny is they're not using that.
I don't think I want to use that! But if we're playing around
with this tech as a filter that's made by some,
you know, independent company that might make some money from it,
why isn't TikTok already implementing that?
And we do see that, for example, in China with their ban
that they've had on gaming and, um, online use late at night.
It does make a difference, but it's not being used elsewhere.
So when you bring in a ban on 16s or under,
you have to then have something like that in place.
And also these teenagers are so savvy when it comes to tech, surely
they're just going to get a VPN and get around it?
Yeah we have, we did see that, particularly in France
with the ban there. Um, you can just get a VPN and say you can pretend
you're logging in from a different country where there is no ban.
So you can get around the issues.
But then I think the thing to bear in mind here is as well, though,
is that if you add friction, so let's say you bring in the ban,
but you can circumvent it with VPN. That is another step.
That is another step that children will have to take to get around it.
So that will knock out a certain number of people.
It's whether or not you want 100%, you know, um, success rate.
Katy, what else are people who are criticising this ban saying? What are their other concerns?
A lot of the experts I've spoken to have kind of expressed a lot
of disappointment that they, they're like, we've talked about this.
We've, you know, advised the government,
and yet nothing seems to have gone through
on anything that we have suggested, um, you know,
and they've even pointed to the fact that the UN
also doesn't really say ban it.
It's about the human rights is to kind of educate and give access to.
It's a really, really hard, uh, law to implement, I think.
I think, you know, and because it's still so much a framework,
there's so many, you know, unanswered questions on this.
So it's very much a headline grabber. But really getting down
to the nitty gritty, we'll see in the next year or so.
So the argument against this ban would be, hang on a minute,
instead of blocking children from going on to dangerous places,
make those dangerous places less dangerous.
And of course, that is even more onus on the technology companies to do that.
But it can happen. It can be done. If you look at Douyin in China,
for example, which is the Chinese equivalent of TikTok,
which is owned by the same company, ByteDance,
they own both TikTok around the entire world.
And then Douyin in China. Douyin is exactly the same as TikTok,
but it is very, very different in terms of the content that is displayed
to young people on that app. It's all about science.
It's all about maths. And they have big campaigns about
social well-being and how to be a good citizen.
There must be teens dancing?!
Well, yeah. Oh, there'll be there'll be a bit of that as well.
But it's a very different experience.
And I think some people in the camp of, 'This is wrong,
don't ban kids, make technology companies do more',
would look at Douyin as an example of that being possible.
Well, let's have a look at how the tech companies are responding.
Because Elon Musk wrote that this Australia ban was
backdoor control of the internet.
How are the other platforms, you know, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat,
how are they reacting?
They're all dead against it, as you can imagine.
The main argument from them is that we need more time.
We need to talk about this properly because, I think Katy mentioned earlier,
it is a bit of a rush.
What's happening in Australia is going through quite fast
and the technology companies, rightly or wrongly, are saying pause,
slow down, let's look at the science, let's look at the research,
let's look at the evidence that there are harms out there for children.
And also let's look at whether or not the verification systems
will actually work. How is it actually going to work.
We are seeing some interesting developments of having
technology companies have youth-related apps.
So you can have a kind of you've seen, for example,
on YouTube, you've got main YouTube and then you've got kids YouTube,
which is meant to be and is, to be fair,
a more moderated and protected version.
So it's that 'making the swimming pool safer' for children.
That's the kind of argument there.
And we might see that rolled out more widely,
where you have a kids' Instagram, a kids' version of TikTok and the others.
So Katy, headlines all over the world.
Lots of people are talking about it. Uh, parents particularly.
Do people in Australia think this is going to succeed?
I think a lot of people are questioning whether it will really succeed,
even those for and against are thinking, like, they
just don't really understand how they could possibly it could possibly work.
So, uh, no, I think a lot of people are wanting to, to wait
and see exactly how this will play out. And to pick up on Joe's point.
So the tech companies, the onus is on them to comply,
but they will face penalties of as much as 50 million AUD.
So that's about £26 million, $33 million USD.
So if they don't comply, that's, you know, the top penalty they can get.
But there will be some exemptions.
So if they're able to create low-risk services, so more kid-friendly services,
then that might kind of help their case.
But again all of this is still, the detail is yet to be defined.
But certainly there's a kind of a motivation there to try
and make these platforms more, uh, kid-friendly.
Well, the whole world is watching Australia on this one.
Katy, thank you so much. Joe, good to have you with us here.
Thank you for watching. If you want more episodes of The Global Story,
you can find them wherever you get your BBC podcasts from.
Don't forget as well to subscribe so you never miss an episode.
We do love hearing from you, so if you have comments on today's episode,
you can leave us a message in the box below.
Goodbye and thanks for watching.
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