Children are growing up with access to endless streams of content — posts from friends and family, mindless but harmless entertainment, as well as posts from extremist influencers, pornography, violent videos, and other material with the potential to cause great harm.
Those same spaces also expose children to possible abuse, cyberbullying and exploitation, while they offer a lifeline to children who are socially or geographically isolated, and provide communities a connection that would have been impossible before the internet age.
But the prime minister has determined the harms far outweigh the advantages and vows he will introduce a bill to ban children from the “scourge” of social media before the end of this year, a proposition that already has the in-principle support of the Coalition.
Facing unproven technologies, the might of global social media behemoths and few examples overseas to guide the government, it won’t be easy, even with political agreement.
Anthony Albanese has made a few signals however of how he sees a path to a social media ban.
The federal government had been quietly working on a ban proposal, but was forced to bring its announcement forward this week after South Australia moved to introduce a state-level ban.
Mr Albanese said on Tuesday morning he did not want it to devolve into an eight-way ban with different rules in each state, but South Australia’s leading charge had offered a plan that would “inform” the Commonwealth’s design.
One of the most comprehensive examinations of a social media ban ever
Earlier this week, the South Australian government handed down one of the most detailed examinations of a possible social media ban, completed by former High Court chief justice Robert French.
The French Review probed the risks and benefits of social media for children, how it should be defined for the purposes of a ban, overseas experiences and the challenges of age assurance and what services should be exempted — as well as whether a ban would contravene the innate rights of children.
His review considered the consequences of banning children under 14, and requirements for parental consent for 14 and 15-year-olds, which social media companies would have a duty to enforce (the Commonwealth is yet to decide on a minimum age, but Mr Albanese said he would err on the higher side).
Justice French noted a third of girls and a quarter of boys had been contacted by a stranger online, and one in five had been sent unwanted inappropriate content that was violent or pornographic.
And he noted reported benefits, including strengthened relationships, access to information, and safe places to find support for sexual and cultural identities, or experiences with illness and disability.
He concluded, while a state-level ban would be constitutional, the challenges of compliance and enforcement made it much more desirable for a nationally led ban.
Tech giants in the frame for a ban — as are gaming and chat platforms
With social media empires rising and falling, and the way people engage with them constantly morphing, SA’s proposal casts a wide net for what could be captured by a social media ban.
In Justice French’s words, its approach encompassed “the ugly, the bad and the good”.
The proposed laws laid out a broad definition of “social media services” that would drag into its net any service that enables online social interaction between two or more people, allows people to connect with some or all other users and allows them to post material to that service — as well as search engines and app stores.
By casting the net so wide, it could allow for games popular with children such as Roblox, chat apps like Discord and streaming platforms like Twitch to also be banned.
Justice French also recommended measures to allow companies to be exempted, for example for services provided by education or health authorities, closed community support groups and services controlled by an adult, such as a classroom teacher.
The Commonwealth is following the French Review closely, and has left the door open for a sweeping ban that could extend beyond the tech giant’s platforms.
But they aren’t likely to go quietly.
In meetings with Justice French, Google advocated for the consideration of YouTube being “carved out” of a ban because it does not recommend content based on user interaction or other social connections. YouTube also has a dedicated platform for children.
Snap Inc., the owners of messaging platform Snapchat, raised some concerns about age verification and inadvertently pushing children onto other less regulated and dangerous platforms.
But it also suggested it would be more practical for age verification measures to be implemented at the app store or device level, which would remove the need for adults to verify their identity directly with each platform and make it easier to enforce restrictions regardless of a platform’s willingness to comply.
Justice French was told in his meeting with Meta that the “antagonists” were the users themselves, who would lie about their age to evade current age requirements.
Meta also raised concerns about the reliability of age assurance technologies, and whether it could expose platforms to legal liability, also raising whether it should be implemented at the app store or device level.
The owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, last week advocated in a Senate inquiry into social media for app stores to obtain parental approval whenever children under 16 downloaded any app, which would be a “simple, industry-wide solution” that would also “responsibly empower” young people to enjoy social media.
Can you actually kick kids off of social media?
It’s not just the social media companies that have expressed doubt about whether a ban can be enforced.
The United Kingdom abandoned its years-long attempt to verify the age of people accessing pornography sites in 2019 after failing to find a workable way to do so.
eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant last year put together a road map for how Australia could establish an age assurance scheme, looking at facial analysis tools that estimate age as well as a system where a third-party platform verifies a person’s age and then issues a “token” that grants permission to websites without actually handing over private data.
That token system also means the provider issuing it does not know what it is being used for, and the website receiving it only knows permission has been granted, without recording any personal details of users — retaining some privacy for adults online.
Undertaking that road map, the eSafety commissioner concluded none of those technologies were sufficiently mature to pursue.
But Mr Albanese says he is prepared for Australia to lead globally, “if need be”.
In May, the federal government pressed ahead, funding a $6.5 million pilot program to find an age assurance technology it could use to lock out children from social media.
That trial is in its final phase, with the government going to tender this week to find a supplier to run a “live test” of technologies.
There is also an open question of whether some of the largest players, headquartered overseas, will actually comply with a ban.
That was a point raised by the eSafety commissioner, who recently lost a bruising fight with X Corp, formerly Twitter, when she attempted to force the removal of violent footage of a church stabbing from the platform.
Justice French suggested a range of enforcement mechanisms were available, including inspections, spot-testing, reporting requirements for platforms and civil penalties where they breached the rules.
He added that where a breach of duty resulted in mental or physical harm to a child, there could be a statutory tort for families or the regulator to seek damages from social media platforms.
The French Review suggested for a “practical and workable” ban, it was sensible to impose a “duty of care” on platforms to take reasonable steps to implement a ban, rather than a “hard-edged prohibition” enforced with penalties as a first resort — an approach he said could encourage cooperation from the tech giants.
Bans could spare children from harm — or silence them
The simple conclusion put by Justice French was that there were costs and benefits to legislating a ban on social media, and the judgement of where that balance lies was a matter for politicians.
Both the eSafety commissioner and the national children’s commissioner have warned a hard ban could discourage children from seeking help when facing harm online if they believe they need to hide their social media use.
The children’s commissioner said the “inequity” of restrictions would also fall most heavily on marginalised children, and that children without a caring adult could “fall through the cracks”.
For all its ills, and its known negative effects on mental health, several submissions to the French Review also noted it could be a boon for children who were isolated or living in remote communities.
In such uncharted waters, the consequences of blocking children from a world that has now become a part of daily life for most people, only to open the floodgates when they reach a certain age, can only be guessed at.
By Jake Evans (ABC News)
