K Srinivasan
WHILE there have been similar moves by other countries, Australia’s move to make social media a no-go area for children below 16 goes far beyond what other nations have attempted. The legislation, called the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024, bans children younger than 16-year-old from social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit, and X.
The legislation would mean that companies like Meta (owners of Facebook) could be fined as much as $A 50 million (roughly Rs 270 plus crore) if they are unable to prevent under-16 from holding accounts on their platforms. There are exemptions, though, that will apply to services like YouTube Kids, WhatsApp, Google Classroom and similar sites.
Complex legislation
It is the complexity of the legislation that may ultimately prove to be its greatest impediment. While banning under-16s from holding accounts, it permits them to access these platforms in a “logged out state”. The idea is that children should be able to visit pages like Facebook business or services that do not require logging onto the platform to access it. It puts the entire onus of gatekeeping on the platform and none on the users, or their parents. The legislation does talk about ‘reasonable steps’, the platforms must take to ensure that its requirements are met. But how they will do it is left entirely to them. It only says that it has to be “determined objectively.”
According to Reuters: ‘’Software testers hired by Australia’s government to determine how to enforce the world’s first national teen social media ban …. …. will likely set the course for lawmakers and tech platforms around the world as they navigate a push to age-restrict social media at a time of growing concern about youth mental health and data collection.’’
One of the prime reasons for the growing calls for legislating social media platforms has been the unfiltered, unregulated highway that most of them run. In the name of freedom of speech and expression plus a determination to offer a democracy of choice, many of these sites are inundated with pornography, gambling and other bizarre and dangerous options like providing a ready reckoner on how to build a gun at home to how to make bio hazardous material in your garage. Of course, most of this garbage is on the internet with some amount in social media. But how is banning social media going to help if all that rubbish is still available on the worldwide net?
Whistle-blower evidence
What triggered the present case was the decision of Meta whistle-blower Frances Haugen in 2021 to go public with hundreds of pages of aired internal emails documenting that Facebook was fully aware of social media’s mental health impact on teenagers. According to the New York Times, ‘’Ms. Haugen has used the documents she amassed to expose how much Facebook knew about the harms that it was causing and provided the evidence to lawmakers, regulators and the news media. In an interview with ‘60 Minutes’, Ms. Haugen, 37, said she had grown alarmed by what she saw on Facebook. The company repeatedly put its interests first rather than the public’s interest, she said. So she copied pages of Facebook’s internal research and decided to do something about it.’’
Disproportionate impact
While the lady has brought the entire issue into Sharp public focus, the fact is technological advancements still have not provided a foolproof method to combine accuracy, privacy, security, and agecheck processes to get the certification right. Also, how do you provide for millions of youngsters who do not have any documents at all to confirm that they are below 16 or above the threshold?
‘’Australia’s social media ban could also have a disproportionate impact on youth from marginalised groups who rely on social media to connect with others and access information. “In cases of rape, abuse or trauma, support for victims may come from social media and it could be detrimental to them if you cut them off from these platforms,” said Pallavi Bedi, a senior policy researcher at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS),” said The Indian Express in a perceptive piece on the subject. For the record, India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, requires “verifiable parental consent”. But there is no tool to verify that the other is indeed the parent of the child!
