Australia bans under 16s from Social Media

Louder for those in the back.

Dd wasn't allowed to have social media until 16. She didn't get IG and TT till 18. She has no FB account.

She never posts and just follows people with EDS and animals.

She did get a Reddit account at 15 that I monitored till 18 and it was very useful for her to connect to those with PIDD, EDS, etc.

Social media can be a gateway connection for kids dealing with rare conditions or who just need a safe space.

We see the issues here at 2peas and we are adults. Social media can be good and can also be bad.

Age shouldn't be a factor.

Yes. Her phone's account was set up under my email. So any time she downloaded something I knew. She was also not allowed to delete her history and I could randomly check. I did that from age 13-16. She was also allowed 2 hours a day of time till age 16, 4 on the weekends. At 16 she could use it more and we kept it at night from age 13-18. At 18 she got a new phone with her own email and could keep her phone. At 16 and 17 I would check every so often.

ETA: I also checked her messages between her and friends and could check her deleted history. She never deleted anything. That is why at 16 I checked way less because I trusted her and she knew if she did anything wrong he phone would go away until she got her own and paid for its service.

I like the idea in that I fear for the broad access young kids have and personally know kids who have done some pretty hideous things, that they learned about via SM, that they otherwise would have never known about.

Ds got his phone at 12 because his Jr High was asking them to use it for various things at school. We were aware it was a slippery slope, and we did a lot of talking about SM, to include how brutal people could be to each other, how you never really know who the people you are interacting with are, and our expectations for how he behaved online. He was not the kid that was going to push back on rules, we were lucky. He didn't get on any SM until high school and when he did, he used a made up name and was never super active, nor were the kids in his friend group. He and his friends use group text to communicate to this day.

I am having trouble figuring out how it will be monitored, especially in the cases of the parents that will say this is overreaching and a load of crap. However, me not being able to figure it out means nothing as I am a tech dork, and I don't have/use social media, except for here. Are we social media?

I do believe that there are things that the SM sites can do and should have done in the first place to protect kids, so I do hold them responsible for their greedy actions and would like to see them hit where it hurts, in their pocket. I hope that any SM companies created going forward will have to have things in place to protect kids, before it is allowed to go live. I also hope that bans like this will get parents thinking about how to talk to their kids a lot more about SM and its perils as well as helping them, as they age in, to be responsible SM users and not just cut them loose at 16 to figure it out on their own. Perhaps mandatory classes at school could also help prep them.

I am super curious as to how this will play out.

Freedom in Texas only applies to whatever the religious right says it does.

Welcome to Gilead!

I disagree that this is just on the parents to monitor/check etc. although many parents need to be far more alert. Our kids are allowed their phones to chat to their friends for a set amount of time and both parents can see who they are chatting with and what’s going on. They are checked on regularly. Social Media is like a fungus, growing all the time and the companies need to have far better safeguards in place to protect ALL of us, not just kids. All they are interested in is profit so they need to start being hit where it hurts.

People are not supposed to drink underage, see adult movies etc. yet kids have done this and will continue to do this and other things which are illegal for their age. They will get round this ban if they want to enough. Maybe we will eventually need finger print technology on all log ins so all who need restrictions in place will be blocked at home pages of sites?

My daughter cut her 4 of her 5 kids off of any devices about a year ago. Ages, 12, 9, 7, 5. The oldest is 19 so.....

They struggled in the beginning, but have adapted and now actually go outside to play, ride bikes, swim in their pool, participate in arts and craft, play board games, read books, etc.... She says they have turned into much better kids.

I guess I don't understand the chatting with younger family members. There would still be a family way to zoom or skype - as long as adults are present kiddos could chat with grandma or auntie or whomever.

I think the only way to enforce this is to have parental controls on the devices. Something that will allow parents to ban or limit the time on certain apps. But that still leaves things up to the parent if they want to use the controls or not.

The only way this would be enforceable by the government is with a system like China has, where every citizen must be registered and their access to the internet is monitored. (For the record, no I'm not in favour of such an idea, I think it's draconian and invasive.)

Navigating the digital environment is just as much a skill that children need to be taught as navigating the physical and social ones. And I don't mean a one off lecture or even a few hours of instruction. That's not good enough, not by a long shot. I've mentored several kids in digital access and media literacy and it was years of work, almost every day to teach organically. Yes, you can ban your child(ren) from SM via parental controls but without teaching them why you are denying them and slowly easing the way into being independent digital citizens by demonstration, they'll just find ways around it.

The internet is possibly the most powerful tool you can have access to as a human, and with great power comes great responsibility, for good and ill.

I like the idea of a law, while it seems unenforceable, it gives parents something to hang their hat on when the kids start with “but everyone has it”

Sure we had our own family rules, seems to have worked ok I guess, but a law could have ended some arguments a lot sooner. Plus with a law not everyone would have it.

But, yes, ultimately it is the parents who have to monitor their children. Hopefully the law makes that a tad easier.

I don't know how this can possibly enforced. I'm with Merge. Parents need to parent their children. They can put restrictions on phones.

I think that right now, the biggest “plus” to come from this law will be to the pockets of lawyers hired to prosecute & defend the social media platforms in court.

From what I’ve read, they have to take reasonable steps to keep children out of their platforms - which means that if one of the platforms is charged, the case will centre around what are ‘reasonable steps’. And right now, no-one knows, they haven’t been defined.

I do like the idea of children being kept off social media, but surely the law has to be defined and enforceable. It would be great, IMO, if a way can be found to properly keep kids out of social media, but how could the SM actually do it?

Ask for ID? But then it would have to be for all members, how else could they tell which ones are minors? That raises all sorts of privacy concerns. And what ID would be used? I imagine that Australia is much like NZ in that the only real ID available to children is a passport and probably the vast majority of kids don’t have a passport.

Rely on an honour system to enter birthdate? Well that would just be nonsense and laughable.
Seriously, how COULD a social media platform deny membership to minors?