Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced that federal legal provisions will be implemented to keep children away from social media in the country. Under this, the minimum age limit for children to log in to sites like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok can be between 14 and 16 years, although the final decision is yet to be taken.
Albanese said his priority was to ban users under the age of 16. Age verification would be implemented in the coming months, but experts admit that enforcing age limits online could be technically difficult.
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Children are being harmed socially!
The Prime Minister said, “I want children to get away from their devices and go to football fields, swimming pools and tennis courts. We want them to get real experiences with real people because we know that social media is causing social harm.”
PM Albanese believes that this is affecting children badly. Australia’s conservative opposition leader Peter Dutton says he will support this age limit. He said, “Every day’s delay exposes young children to the wrong influences of social media.”
Some warned, some supported
However, Toby Murray, associate professor of computing and IT at the University of Melbourne, said it was not certain that the technology would be available to enforce such restrictions. He said, “We already know that the current age limit verifications are not very effective.
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However, analysts warn that an age limit may not help troubled children. “It could cause serious harm by excluding young people from healthy participation in the digital world,” said Daniel Angus, head of the Digital Media Research Centre at the University of Queensland.
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