When something is not working, abandon it. The policy maker and politician, the latter often inclined to populist temptation and the endless tapping for votes, will decide to make a state of wrongheadedness even worse. The evidence is starting to grow that Australia’s daft delving into the world of regulating a child’s access to social media (the arbitrary limit when social media virginity is shed is 16 years) is falling flat. Here, we have the continued, easy target that keeps nourishing the blundering, self-pleasuring prefects in Canberra: irresponsible companies with their social media platforms luring children into a cyberworld of harmful content and damaging consequence. We also have the object of holy salvation: children untouched by the world. Punish the social media platform (though in small spanks rather than vigorous lashings) or at the very least convince them to place age-set limits to accounts; spare the unfortunate, ignorant child supposedly incapable of navigating technology they can master in a fraction of the time their parents can.
The process leading to the passing of the legislation was, it should be remembered, also suspect. With parental certitude and forced caring, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese spoke of saving childhood before the ravaging predations of Silicon Valley. Miraculously, children would cease being screen gorgers and become fit-as-fiddle athletes, climb trees or play the tuba. The underlying, somewhat sinister message, was that of a moral panic taking hold. And where such panic exercises itself, the urges to control, monitor and police tend to follow with molesting predictability. The children become a pretext and, if anything, ought to be ignored. Hence the conspicuous absence of extensive consultation with youth, or their involvement prior to the drafting process.
The resulting Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024 (Cth) is not sailing well. It was the subject of a recent analysis in the medical journal BMJ by researchers from the University of Newcastle. The observational study of 408 children between the ages of 12 and 17 found that over 85% of the participants “reported using social media platforms subject to the Act at follow-up”. Between 54-68% reported the use of their own accounts; 66% “reported exposure to platform age verification, most commonly self-declared age (24-39%) or uploading a picture (‘selfie’) (13-27%).” Instances of circumvention or the use of social media via a private browser (6-11%) were also noted.
While it is easy to loose oneself in the blissful undergrowth of statistical data, the conclusion of the study is telling and, for the righteous in policy, damning: “Despite the intent of the Social Media Minimum Age Act 2024 to delay access to social media platforms and reduce the potential for online harms, little evidence was found of immediate substantive reductions in reported social media use by adolescent under 16 years.”
The academic study adds some dour bulk to the commentary showing the ban to be fatuous and embarrassingly ineffective. Data provided by the parental monitoring company Qustodio to Crikey in March would not have made pleasant reading to the prohibitionists. “While TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat all saw a decrease in use by Australians aged 10-15, the majority of teens who had been using social media platforms pre-ban remained on the services afterwards.”
That same month, the tireless Mike Masnick of Techdirt, never missing the chance to excoriate Australia’s buffoonish legislation, suggested that the ban had resulted in something far worse than simple failure. Fine if it was simply a case of having to do something for the children and failing for want of perfection. “But that’s not what happened. The ban didn’t leave things where they were. It made things actively worse through a mechanism that was entirely predictable.” The ban entailed “a test of technical sophistication, rather than a test of vulnerability. The kids who can’t figure out how to get around it – or who don’t have friends or older siblings to help them – are the kids who are already isolated or lack the technical skills to bypass a block.” The thick and lonely always get it in the neck.
Add to this the utter absence of punitive grit in the enforcement mechanism – so far no fines have been imposed (they can be as high as AU$49.5 million) for a failure of the platforms to comply – and one wonders where the utility of this feat of ineffectualness lies.
What, then, does the government do? Not abandon a silly policy to please parents who should know better, or voters unaware about the behaviour of children or, for that matter, social media platforms. Instead, Albanese tells his fellow parliamentarians on June 25 that there is “more to do” regarding a ban that is “complex”. His less than able gauleiter, eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant, far from admitting failure, simply claims a lack of sufficient teeth in enforcing the ban. “I don’t have potent powers,” she lamented to the Sydney Morning Herald earlier this month.
Worried about remarks made by the surly commissioner, Albanese has returned to the theme of control. “We can’t allow the power that these companies, which are unaccountable, which get massive amounts of … profit and have extraordinary power. We need to make sure that Australians are in charge of this.” His proposal: to increase the threshold of financial penalties to AU$99 million. For the PM, it was abundantly “clear big tech are not doing enough to comply with the law – there are still too many children on social media.” The eSafety commissioner would also be vested with greater powers to compel social media companies to furnish evidence of what had been done to prevent those under 16 years from opening or using an account, including from third parties.
Globally, the desire to hold back youth from perceived corruption, ennui and neuroses at the hands of nasty tech titans is underway. The Australian PM is pleased, for instance, that 16 countries have also decided to replicate the failing ban, because nothing sells in politics like a moralistic prohibition that doesn’t work. This has little to do with matronly urges to protect so much as the opportunist’s desire to exploit a situation. Children are not inherently innocent, charmingly ignorant, and hopelessly impotent as their false defenders assume. They are more than capable of making decisions and attaining an understanding of sophistication and worth regarding the use of technology. In time, as is often the case, they will end up teaching that very generation wishing to close doors how to not only open them but understand what’s behind the barrier, however ghastly it might be.