Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Australia’s implementation of the world-first ban on social media for children under 16 “is one of the biggest social and cultural changes,” stressing “enough is enough.”
The ban took effect at midnight on Wednesday, December 10, with authorities ordering social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, YouTube, and Snapchat to block children or face fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars or US$33 million.
Albanese said it was a “proud moment,” declaring that “my pride to be prime minister of Australia has never been greater. This is Australia showing enough is enough.”
But many Australians expressed frustration about the implementation.
“This will make an enormous difference. It is one of the biggest social and cultural changes that our nation has faced. It’s a profound reform which will continue to reverberate around the world in the coming months,” he added.
Hundreds of thousands of Australian teens are already active on social media, with reportedly 440,000 aged from 13 to 15 on Snapchat, 350,000 on Instagram, 325,000 on YouTube and more than 200,000 on TikTok.
The eSafety commissioner lists Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, X, and YouTube as restricted platforms.
Messaging services such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are not covered by the ban. Other platforms and tools, including Discord, GitHub, Google Classroom, LEGO Play, Pinterest, Steam, Steam Chat, and YouTube Kids are also excluded.
Penalties for not conforming to the law target platforms rather than children or their parents.
The eSafety commissioner said it “will monitor compliance and enforce the law” using its regulatory powers under the Online Safety Act.
Frustration about effectiveness
Many youths have already been able to get around the ban, with age assurance systems misclassifying users and workarounds such as virtual private networks (VPN) being used, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).
The government admitted that the ban would not be perfect or instantaneous, noting that loopholes that allowed teens to circumvent the ban would not stay open forever.
Some parents shared their frustrations with ABC regarding the ban and its effectiveness.
One parent said her 14-year-old son still had access to Snapchat after he changed his age and passed the identification system.
“I went into his Snapchat account to change his birthday back, and it won’t let me as you can only change your date of birth a limited amount of times,” she said. “How can this be allowed? How did he get his age confirmed at 23 when he is only 14?”
Another parent said his son opened TikTok this morning and received the message that his age is estimated to be 18, despite being 11.
“My 13-year-old daughter still has access to all her social media accounts this morning, and she verified her age via facial scanning. I am hoping that they are still working their way through, and she will be booted off soon. If not, then it’s a fail for us,” said another parent.
Lisa Given, a professor of information sciences, said that facial scanning technology had an error margin of one to three years.
“That means the system could guess that a 14-year-old is a 17-year-old and [incorrectly] believe that they are old enough to have an account,” she said, adding that the under-16s could also use other methods, such as using VPNs and fake IDs. (Anadolu)