Australia said on Saturday it would double the maximum penalty it can impose on tech firms that fail to uphold the country’s social media ban for children under 16, as evidence mounts that the ban has had little effect on teen use.
The government will also strengthen the information-gathering powers of its internet regulator, the eSafety Commissioner, allowing it to compel social media companies to provide evidence of what they have done to stop children from opening accounts.
Under the changes, the maximum penalty for systematic failures to uphold the ban jumps to 99 million Australian dollars (HK$534.9 million) from 49.5 million Australian dollars.
‘Big tech not doing enough’: Prime Minister
The government reiterated that eSafety is actively investigating possible non-compliance by five platforms: Meta’s Instagram and Facebook, Google’s YouTube, Snap’s Snapchat, and TikTok.
Google, Meta, Snap and TikTok did not immediately respond to requests for comment about Australia’s plans.
Australia’s six-month-old ban is being closely watched by many nations seeking to emulate it amid concerns about the impact of social media on young people’s mental and physical health.
Britain this month said it planned restrictions that go further, as gaming and live-streaming platforms will also be affected.
“I’m heartened by the shift in conversation and the global momentum we’ve seen since introducing the social media minimum age, but it’s clear big tech are not doing enough to comply with the law – there are still too many children on social media,” Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a statement.
The statement said that since the ban has been put in place, more than 5 million under-16 accounts have been deactivated or restricted.
But numerous studies have also shown that age-assurance mechanisms, such as taking a selfie, which have been put in place by tech companies, are easily circumvented by children and that in many cases, the children have never been asked to prove their age.
Among Sydney’s adults, Penny Lilley said on Sunday she doubted stiffer penalties would prompt improvements from platforms “when they make so much money as well off of people being on their websites”.
Another Sydneysider, Zara Keats, told Reuters she felt platforms “haven’t really done as much as they said they were going to” in upholding the ban.
“I have family who are still using it actively, and I have to sort of sit there and pretend like it’s not illegal for them to do so,” Keats said.
Teens evade ban, study finds
According to a study published in the British Medical Journal on Wednesday that looked at 408 adolescents, 85 per cent of Australians aged 12 to 15 were still using social media three months after the ban took effect.
Two-thirds of underage users stayed online by self-declaring an age over 16 or posting a selfie that the platform accepted as over 16, it said.
In April, an industry body representing tech suppliers blamed problems enforcing the ban on social media platforms’ weak deployment of tools available to run age checks rather than the limits of the technology.
“Based on the regular updates I receive from the eSafety Commissioner, it is clear to me that social media platforms are adopting tricks straight out of the big tech playbook and doing the bare minimum to get by,” Minister for Communications Anika Wells said in the statement.
In addition to empowering the regulator to demand information from the social media platforms, planned updates to the law will also allow it to gather information from third parties such as age-assurance or app store providers to assist in testing claims made by the platforms.
A spokesperson for the prime minister said the timing of introducing the amendments to the law to parliament had not yet been decided, but the government would have more to say on the matter soon.
Message board website Reddit is separately challenging the ban in Australia’s highest court, seeking to overturn it on free speech grounds. The government has said it will defend against the lawsuit.
