Australia's Social Media Restrictions: Is Age Verification the Key to Success?

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April Willis, like many others, has been engaged with social media since her early teenage years.

As she navigated these platforms, she didn’t recognize the effects they were having on her at first.

Looking back, she realizes that much of her “behaviors” and the “content and interactions” she experienced on these platforms were “definitely not great” for her mental health.

However, the 22-year-old ReachOut youth advocate believes that a ban might not have deterred her.

“The tough reality is that a lot of us would think, ‘I would’ve found a workaround’, just like I’m sure many young people will.”

Whether she truly would have navigated around such restrictions is a question experts are considering with six months left before Australia’s social media ban for those under 16 goes into effect.

Starting December 11, social media companies will need to take “reasonable steps” to block Australian children and teens younger than 16 from accessing their platforms.

Can age assurance be done effectively in Australia?

A government-commissioned trial into the potential technologies used to assess the ages of users presented their preliminary findings on Friday.

Their key finding was that “age assurance can be done in Australia and can be private, robust and effective”.

“The preliminary findings indicate that there are no significant technological barriers preventing the deployment of effective age assurance systems in Australia,” project director Tony Allen said in a statement.

“These solutions are technically viable, can be seamlessly integrated into current services, and are important for supporting the safety and rights of children online.”

A hand holding a mobile phone with social media apps installed.

The communications minister will decide which apps are included in the ban. Source: AAP / Joel Carrett

With details about the accuracy of the technologies tested left for later release, experts are wary of the trial’s initial claim.

Daniel Angus is a professor of digital communication at the Queensland University of Technology and the director of its Digital Media Research Centre.

“One of the key concerns that we have is how the industry often will inflate their accuracy and the utility of these approaches when we know that there are still significant issues when it comes to both gender and also racial biases, but also the general lack of efficacy of these approaches,” he said.

According to the Department of Communications, a government-commissioned report from the Social Research Centre found nearly nine in 10 adults were supportive of age assurance measures.

Only two of those 10 had heard of at least one potential method to check a person’s age online.

“Research indicates that Australians overwhelmingly back our world-leading age restrictions on social media for those under 16 and hold strong expectations of platforms regarding data protection and security,” stated Communications Minister Anika Wells.

Australians could be ‘in for a rude shock’

Angus says the general public has not been adequately informed about the likely impacts of these technologies.

“I think Australians are in for a very rude shock when this actually perhaps, gets implemented, and they all of a sudden are being forced to hand over [their] data to access services that they’ve freely been able to access up to this point,” he said.

“It’s absolutely everything you would expect to find in the midst of a moral panic where people have been sucked along with this idea that, ‘Yeah, this thing is really, really bad and we need to prevent it,’ but have not stopped to think critically about this, and then not been properly informed about the fullness of that risk.”

John Pane, chair of digital rights organisation Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA), is a member of the stakeholder advisory board for the trial.

He says the EFA has “concerns about the rollout of this technology because it’s not simply about restricting access to social media platforms for children 15 and under”.

“It requires all adults who participate in the online environment, who wish to access social media platforms to either have their age authenticated or establish their identity as a means of, or part of that age authentication.

“So from our perspective, it’s the Trojan horse for getting people to get used to providing more and more credentials online.”

‘A really good start’

Amid these concerns, some remain supportive of the ban, including Kirra Pendergast, another member of the stakeholder advisory board.

“Initially, I was only against the ban purely because of the technical workarounds that are possible for some kids who are more technical than others,” she said.

“But after having lots of conversations with parents in particular, it became abundantly clear that the ban was making parents have a conversation that we’ve needed to have for a very, very long time.”

Pendergast is the founder of Safe on Social, an online safety advisory group for schools and businesses, and chief digital safety strategist at the global Ctrl+Shft Coalition.

“I get contacted almost every single day by parents that are struggling with this,” the cybersecurity expert said.

“They don’t know how to say no.”

Pendergast said parents and educators would have “a lot more time to get it right”.

“It’s like all aspects of technical security, cybersecurity, and cyber safety. It’s never ever going to be 100 per cent. This is never going to be the silver bullet.

“It’s a really, really good start because, again, it sparked all of the conversations that we needed to have at every level of society.”

Professor Tama Leaver, an internet studies academic at Curtin University and the chief investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child, says the ban responds to a “very real fear that parents have that social media is an unknown space”.

“If this is world-leading, we need to be quite clear on what the legislation is actually doing.”

A teenager uses his mobile phone to access social media

Australia is the first country to try to implement a teen social media ban. Source: AAP / Dean Lewins

He warned that the implementation of the policy may not address all the issues that have been discussed.

“Some harms, for example, such as cyberbullying, were very much touted as one of the big problems to be solved,” he said.

“There is nothing in this legislation that addresses cyberbullying meaningfully at all.

“This at best addresses algorithmic amplification … of young people’s experiences of social media, but … we expect from what’s been said already that most messaging apps are exempt from this legislation.

“So, the spaces where we imagine cyberbullying is most likely to happen are not being touched by this legislation at all.”

Leaver was a signatory on an open letter from more than 140 academics and civil society organisations against the ban.

“If the rest of the world is watching Australia and hoping that this might be a blueprint, we’re going to have an awful lot of work to do in the next few months to actually have a blueprint to practically do this rather than simply aspire to giving parents some reassurance,” he said.