Australian Parliament Passes Bill To Ban Social Media For Under-16s

Australia has moved one step closer to being the first country to fully ban social media for children under-16 years old.

The Associated Press reported that on Wednesday Australia’s House of Representatives passed the bill that would ban children younger than 16 years old from social media. This leaves just the Australia Senate to finalise the ground-breaking law.

Earlier this month Australian government had announced “world leading legislation” to tackle the use of social media by children and young teenagers, despite the vocal opposition from the likes of Elon Musk, as well as an advocate for social media platforms.

Bill passed

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the time said the new legislation would be similar to other laws such as restricting alcohol sales to those over 18 years.

At the moment, Facebook, Instagram, Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok stipulates that children have to be at least 13 years old to use their platforms.

The Australian government then introduced the bill to Parliament’s lower house (House of Representatives), and it was debated by lawmakers in Parliament on Monday.

On Wednesday the bill was passed by Australia’s House of Representatives with 102 votes versus 13 against.

This approval was unsurprising, given Australia’s states and territories had unanimously supported the ban, as did the main opposition party in Australia.

Senate decision

After passing in the House of Representatives, the bill was then introduced to the Senate late Wednesday, but it adjourned for the day hours later without putting it to a vote.

AP reported that the legislation will likely be passed on Thursday, the Parliament’s final session for the year and potentially the last before elections (due within months).

The major political parties’ support in Australia all but guarantees the legislation will pass in the Senate, where no party holds a majority of seats.

According to AP, lawmakers who were not aligned with either the government or the opposition were most critical of the legislation during debate on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The social media platforms had reportedly asked for the vote to be delayed until at least June next year when a government-commissioned evaluation of age assurance technologies made its report on how the ban could be enforced.

Not perfect

Opposition lawmaker Dan Tehan was quoted as telling Parliament that the Australian government had agreed to accept amendments in the Senate that would bolster privacy protections. Platforms would not be allowed to compel users to provide government-issued identity documents including passports or driver’s licenses, nor could they demand digital identification through a government system.

“Will it be perfect? No. But is any law perfect? No, it’s not. But if it helps, even if it helps in just the smallest of ways, it will make a huge difference to people’s lives,” Tehan told Parliament.

If the bill becomes law this week, the platforms would have one year to work out how to implement the age restrictions before the penalties are enforced.

Social media platforms including TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, Elon Musk’s X and Instagram will be liable for fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars ($33m or £26m) for systemic failures to prevent young children from holding accounts.

UK to follow?

Australia is not the only country looking at enacting legislation to protect children and youngsters from social media.

Last week the British technology secretary Peter Kyle admitted that United Kingdom may be about to follow the lead of Australia, when he told the BBC that a possible ban on social media for under-16s in the UK was “on the table”.

However Kyle later backed down and admitted similar legislation was “not on the cards” for now.