Just like many adult sites, now the government of Australia plans and intends to set up a minimum age limit for children who want to use social media. The action has been taken citing the concerns about the mental and physical health of the children and the Australian government now plans to spark a black lash from digital rights advocates who have won the mayor and could drive dangerous online activity underground. The Prime Minister of Australia Anthony said that his Center government would run an age verification trial before introducing age minimum laws for social media this year in 2024.
“I want to see kids off their devices and onto the footy fields and the swimming pools and the tan is courts, “Albanese told the Australian Broadcasting Corps. “We want them to have real experiences with real people because we know that social media is causing social harm”, he added. No money people think that the law would put Australia among the first countries in the world to impose an age restriction on the use of social media. The previous attempts including the European Union had failed to form complaints about reducing the online rights of minors.
Meta the owner of Facebook and Instagram has a self-imposed minimum age of 13 and has stated that it wanted to empower young people to benefit from its platform and equip parents with the tools to support them instead of just cutting off access from the Minors. According to tech industry figures, “Australia has one of the world’s most online populations with a fifth of its 26 million people on social media”. Moreover, Australia’s internet regulator the e-safety commissioner has also wanted in a June submission to the inquiry that restriction-based approaches will limit young people’s access to critical support and that this step will push them to less regulated and nonmainstream services.
No, the prime minister has announced that this age restriction plan will be implemented due to the backdrop of a parliamentary inquiry into how social media affects own society and those effects have heard sometimes emotional testimony of mental health impacts on teenagers But the inquiry has also heard concerns about whether age limits would protect and keep younger people from harm by encouraging them to hide their online activity. Some experts have declared this move an abrupt knee-jerk move as it also threatens to create CS harm by excluding young people from meaningful healthy participation in the digital World This exclusion can also lead to potentially driving them to lower quality online spaces which are less visible and will not be traceable.
Digi, which is an industry body representing social media platforms has released a statement that the government should listen to experts’ voices such as the said commissioner’s mental health experts as well as the LGBTQIA+ and other marginalized groups who have expressed concerns about bands so that we are not unintentionally pushing our kids into unsafe less visible parts of the internet.