Australia says it can’t go it alone on social media ban for kids

Countries should get behind a global movement to shift the norms and laws around how kids use social media, Australia’s ambassador to the EU told POLITICO.

Australia in December became the first country in the world to implement restrictions on kids’ use of social media, effectively banning under-16s from using popular platforms like TikTok and YouTube in a move that has spurred similar efforts from European countries.

But the Australian regulator in charge of enforcing the country’s ban last week conceded there are “significant concerns” with how social media platforms are complying with Canberra’s restrictions, four months after they came into force.

“Over time, international community concern is what will produce substantive, enduring change globally to the algorithms and a change to the design behaviours of big tech companies,” Angus Campbell, Canberra’s envoy to the EU, told POLITICO. 

“If it was just Australia, tech companies could work with the carrots [positive enforcement mechanisms] and absorb the penalties, to some national benefit, but if progressively, it becomes the wider community of the world demanding change, I think you will see significant positive change,” Campbell said.

His comments come as multiple European countries work to introduce social media bans for young people. France leads the pack with a draft law to come into effect as soon as September, while the European Parliament has also urged the European Commission to propose an EU-wide system.

That’s despite the fact that Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, said in an assessment last week that Australia’s measures have not yet succeeded in keeping most kids away from platforms, and neither have reports of online harms dropped discernibly. It found significant gaps in enforcing the ban, including platforms allowing and even encouraging kids to try age-assurance methods several times until they got around them.

“Ban or no ban, huge numbers of children remain on risky and exploitative platforms,” said Leanda Barrington-Leach, executive director of the 5Rights Foundation, which campaigns for childrens’ digital rights. “Consequently, ban or no ban, companies must remain fully accountable for children’s safety, and made to design their services accordingly.”

Announcing investigations into Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube’s compliance, Inman Grant said she was moving from encouraging platforms to comply with the law to more actively enforcing it. 

Campbell told POLITICO that the commissioner’s assessment was “building the enabling environment” to “move from the carrot to the stick.”

A Canberra effect?

The EU is paying attention to what happens in the southern hemisphere. 

“We are watching closely your world-leading social media ban,” Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told the Australian parliament in late March when she was visiting to sign a historic trade deal with Canberra. 

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, who has said measures have not yet succeeded in keeping most kids away from platforms, speaks during the launch of Australia’s social media reform in Sydney in December last year. | David Gray/AFP via Getty Images

Other countries are also moving forward. Indonesia and Brazil — with a combined population of around 600 million — implemented restrictions for under-16s in March. Indonesia’s ban covers platforms deemed “higher risk,” including YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X and Roblox. Brazil requires accounts of under-16s to be linked to the account of a legal guardian. 

Experts monitoring the impact of Australia’s ban warn against the EU taking a one-size-fits-all approach to age verification. Effective regulation requires allowing each platform to tailor age verification methods to their “specific operational contexts” — a concession to the fast-changing nature of technology — Abbey Cubit and Sébastien Fassiaux wrote in a paper for the Australian Institute of International Affairs.

But the Commission, along with six EU countries including France and Greece, has been trialing an age verification wallet that it hopes will become the gold standard.

Meta spokesperson Ben Walters said the eSafety commissioner’s findings bolster the case for the government to prescribe age checks at the app store and operating system level.

“That’s how you protect young people not just on major platforms, but across the more than two million available apps, many of which have weaker safeguards,” he said.

Mizy Clifton contributed to this report.