Byron K
SYDNEY (Reuters) – After Mehta whistleblower Francis (BCBA:) Haugen’s 2021 internal emails showed that big tech companies are aware of the mental health impact social media is having on youth, and world leaders are talking about ways to curb the addiction technology has on young people. I’ve been thinking about it.
When the U.S. Surgeon General issued a recommendation to post health warnings on social media in 2023, it was condemned as a teen mental health crisis, but lawmakers from Florida to France are pushing through resistance based on freedom of speech, privacy and limits to information. Couldn’t help. Age verification technology.
What ended the deadlock was the wife of the leader of Australia’s second-smallest state who told her husband to take action after reading American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s 2024 bestseller The Anxious Generation criticizing social media. That was when I told him to get drunk.
“I remember exactly the moment she said to me, ‘You need to read this book and you need to do something about it,'” South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas told reporters in Adelaide on Friday, the day after the Australian summit. Congress has passed a nationwide social media ban for people under 16.
“I didn’t reasonably expect it to happen this quickly,” he added.
It took just six months for Malinauskas’ personal efforts to limit youth access to social media in his state, home to just 7% of Australia’s 27 million people, to snowball into the world’s first national ban.
This pace highlights the deep concerns of Australian voters on this issue. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese plans to hold elections in early 2025.
An Australian government YouGov survey found that 77% of Australians support banning social media for under-16s. This is an increase from 61% in August before the government’s official announcement. Only 23% of respondents opposed this bill.
“This is where it all started,” said Rodrigo Praino, professor of politics and public policy at Flinders University in South Australia.
“The federal government, including the prime minister, immediately understood that this was a problem that needed to be addressed, and one that was best addressed nationally. Allowing children to use social media indiscriminately has become a global problem.”
Chance also played a role in transforming Malinauskas’ national action into a global regulatory prototype.
When the father of four answered his wife’s call in May, Facebook (NASDAQ:) and Instagram owner Meta announced two months ago that they would stop paying content royalties to media outlets around the world, potentially violating Australian online copyright laws. It was announced that this would be activated.
Meta’s decision, in part, prompted the federal government to launch a broader investigation into the social impacts of social media, from the merits of age-restricted social media to the knock-on effects of Meta’s royalty cancellation.
Meanwhile, opposition lawmakers have begun calling for age restrictions on social media against the backdrop of a legal battle between X and Australia’s e-safety regulator over the spread of false and explicit content linked to two public knife attacks in Sydney last April.
Last May, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation (NASDAQ:), the country’s largest newspaper publisher, launched an editorial campaign titled “Let Them Be Kids” to ban social media use by children under 16.
By mid-2024, the News Corporation Masthead and Parliamentary Inquiry were broadcasting emotional stories of parents whose children had lost their lives or lost their lives due to social media-related bullying and body image issues.
After Malinauskas announced a state policy banning youth under 14 in September, Albanese appeared in media the next day and said his government would enact a federal version by the end of the year.
“Parents want their kids to get off their phones and be on the soccer field,” said Albanese, who, like Malinauskas, is from the centre-left Labor Party. “Me too.”
But the proposed South Australian ban is broadly consistent with restrictions already enacted in countries including France and US states such as Florida. States like Florida have left the door open for teens 14 and older to continue using social media with parental permission.
The federal model Albanese government presented to parliament last November explained that it did not exercise parental discretion and freed parents from the burden of performing a policing role.
The ban was attacked by social media companies, which took full responsibility for it and threatened to impose A$49.5 million in fines, without telling them how it worked. Trials of age verification technology will begin next year.
The left-wing Green Party rejected the bill as premature and unfair to young people, while some far-right lawmakers broke with their party’s support and voted against it, concerned about possible government overreach and surveillance.
But with strong support from the government and most opposition parties, the bill was passed shortly after 11pm on the last parliamentary day of the year. Applies from 1 year onwards.
