Summary
Australia’s government plans to introduce legislation banning social media for under-16s. The proposed laws aim to mitigate the harm social media inflicts on Australian children.
The government will consult with parents, social media platforms, and experts about the age limit.
The legislation will not apply to young people already on social media, and there will be no penalties for users.
Evergreen. Becoming a parent makes people paranoid. Catering to that paranoia is not helpful.
The only way to enforce these types of laws is to verify age, which means providing ID, which is ridiculous.
I can’t understand how someone hasn’t explained to them that it’s impossible to enforce. I can only see two possible ways:
Require every social media platform operating in Australia to do rigorous ID checks on all users to ensure no-one is under the legal age, or
Somehow lock down the whole Australian internet so that users must login and then validate the identity, and therefore age, of all users. Then maintain a huge filter table to restrict under age users from social media.
Both of these are clearly never going to happen. Have I missed a simpler way to do it?
The simpler way is hard. It requires parents to be present in the lives of their children.