Australian Communications Minister Anika Wells said on Friday that some 4.7 million social media accounts have been shut down since her country’s ban on social media for children under 16 went into effect in December.
“We stared down everybody who said it couldn’t be done, some of the most powerful and rich companies in the world and their supporters. Now Australian parents can be confident that their kids can have their childhoods back,” Wells told reporters on Friday.
“The fact that in spite of some skepticism out there, it’s working and being replicated now around the world, is something that is a source of Australian pride,” said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, alluding to interest in similar bans expressed by countries like Denmark, France, New Zealand, Malaysia, and the United Kingdom.
Albanese and Wells said they were pleased by the cooperation they have received from social media companies so far.
“Change doesn’t happen overnight, but these early signs show it’s important we’ve acted to make this change,” Albanese said.
The total number of shuttered accounts was collated from reports by ten major social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Snapchat, TikTok, X, and YouTube. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced earlier this week that it deactivated 544,052 accounts on its various platforms that were believed to belong to children.
“Our concerns about determining age online without an industry standard remain,” Meta said in its announcement.
“We call on the Australian government to engage with industry constructively to find a better way forward, such as incentivizing all of industry to raise the standard in providing safe, privacy-preserving, age appropriate experiences online, instead of blanket bans,” the company said.
Australia’s social media ban imposed fines of up to $33.2 million if the listed platforms did not take what the Australian government deemed “reasonable” steps to exclude children under 16.
Those reasonable efforts included demands for identification documents from social media users, using assorted data about users to estimate their age, and even using facial recognition technology.
Australia’s law includes exemptions for some platforms, including messaging services like WhatsApp, and as Meta pointed out in its statement, the law does little to prevent children from accessing unacceptable content through web browsers.
Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant was unperturbed by opposition claims that tech-savvy young people were evading the government ban, or moving to smaller platforms that are not covered by the existing law. She said her agency was planning to forge ahead with new “world-leading A.I. companion and chatbot restrictions” beginning in March.
CNBC on Thursday found mixed reactions from Australian teens, with some happy to be free of the time-draining addiction of maintaining social media accounts, while others boasted of various strategies to evade the ban.
Inman Grant said the efforts of some children to evade the ban – sometimes with assistance from parents who disagree with the new law – did not render it ineffective.
“Speed limits, for instance, are not a failure because some people speed. Most would agree that roads are safer because of them,” she argued.
The UK Guardian reported on Thursday that over 100,000 Britons have contacted their members of parliament (MPs) to demand a social media ban for children modeled on Australia’s.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer agreed that “we need to better protect children from social media.”
“All options are on the table in relation to what further protections we can put in place – whether that’s under-16s on social media or an issue I am very concerned about, under-fives and screen time,” Starmer said on Thursday.
The Guardian noted that Starmer was formerly opposed to banning social media for children, “believing such a move would be difficult to police and could push teenagers towards the dark web,” but he appears to have been swayed by Australia’s claims of success and growing interest from the British public.
“In the UK the issue could come to a head next week when the House of Lords is due to vote on an amendment to the children’s wellbeing and schools bill that would prevent under-16s from accessing social media. If passed, the House of Commons would have to hold a binding vote on the issue in the next few months,” the Guardian anticipated.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Thursday called for the U.S. Congress to pass laws barring children from social media, citing growing evidence of anxiety and social difficulties caused by excessive screen time.
“Something is very wrong and I don’t believe it’s merely a coincidence these harms are rising alongside the early and excessive use of screens. No more social media for children and no more addictive algorithms for teenagers,” he said.
Cruz noted his own concerns about protecting his own teenage daughters from excessive screen time and social media anxiety.
“How do I keep back all these forces that want to tear my children apart? How do I protect them from this? It’s incredibly hard to be the one parent who won’t let your kid have a phone or social media account,” he said.
The “Kids Off Social Media Act” backed by Sen. Cruz and his bipartisan supporters would be a bit less draconian than Australia’s, imposing a minimum age of 13 for using social media plus a ban on algorithmically targeted content for children under 17. The bill would also require schools to block social media content on their systems in order to be eligible for federal funding.
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), co-sponsor of the bill, highlighted the importance of preventing social media companies from using algorithms to feed more content to young users, a feedback loop that keeps children glued to their screens for unhealthy amounts of time.
“I think banning the algorithmic feed for kids who are not yet fully developed is a very powerful tool,” said Schatz.
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