Khaberni - The Australian government has launched a plan to ban teenagers and young people from accessing social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and others, which has led many countries to consider adopting the same approach.
Australia is the first democratic country - according to a Bloomberg report - to adopt these measures, with fines up to 32 billion dollars for companies that violate these rules.
The report indicates that policymakers in Copenhagen, Jakarta, and Brazil are seriously considering following the same steps, and thus are closely monitoring the situation in Australia to see how tech companies, which will lose a portion of their large audience, react.
A pathway for the rest of the world
Denmark's Minister for Digital Affairs, Karoline Stig Olsen, while speaking with Bloomberg, said she was jealous of the new Australian law, describing this step as "really important and fundamental".
Olsen's statements reflect the global view on the new decision, which will prompt many governments around the world to consider it, especially with the absence of clear official statistics on adolescents' use of social media platforms.
Abigail Chen from the political and regulatory consulting firm Flint Global believes "as more governments aim to tighten age restrictions on social media, this could lead to the emergence of a global set of age assurance or platform validation rules."
While Australia is the first to make an official decision and will implement it starting December 10th, many other countries have begun moving in the same direction.
Brazil, in particular, has made a notable decision, linking accounts of users under 16 years of age to their parents' accounts starting next March.
The European Parliament also voted in favor of a new law requiring social media platforms to obtain parental consent for creating accounts for children under the age of 15.
The same was also the case in Indonesia, where the government requires parental consent before setting up accounts for teenagers under the age of 18; similarly, the governments of Malaysia and New Zealand have decided to completely prohibit teenagers under the age of 16 from using social media platforms.
Varied response from companies
The companies have responded differently to the new decisions, with Meta, owner of platforms Facebook and Instagram, announcing its intention to comply with these laws, despite being convinced that there are better solutions, according to a Bloomberg report.
TikTok has also announced its intention to comply with the decision, despite its belief that banning users based on age is an entirely ineffective step.
However, Google, YouTube, and Snap refused to be classified as social media platforms, emphasizing that this classification demonstrates a misunderstanding of how the platforms operate, and X has declined to comment on the matter.
What is the reason behind this trend?
The main reason behind this trend among companies and social media platforms can be traced back to the problems occurring within these platforms that lead to suicide and death among teenagers and young people, from dangerous TikTok challenges to digital bullying.
Patrick Jones, a 16-year-old ambassador in a youth mental health advocacy group, believes "the content is the problem, not our ability to access it," representing a part of the voices opposed to this decision, which sees that other steps must be followed to protect teenagers from offensive content on social media platforms.
The mechanism of implementing the ban on social media platforms is still unknown as many of the programming restrictions placed on platforms can be easily bypassed.
