Has Australia’s social media ban worked? The eSafety Commissioner is monitoring kids’ Ritalin use to find out
Medical and educational records of more than 4,000 children aged 10 to 16 will be monitored for more than two years as part of a major study assessing the impact of Australia’s world-first under-16 social media ban on young people and their families.
NAPLAN scores, Medicare information and Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme records will be analyzed alongside surveys, interviews and smartphone usage monitoring data by the eSafety Commissioner’s research and evaluation team to determine whether the Albanian government’s signature policy has been successful.
“[We’re] eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said of the study announced Thursday: “I’m looking at some important things that I don’t think have been done before… social regulation meets technical regulation at its most complex.
“Are kids taking less Ritalin or less antidepressants, are they sleeping more or sleeping less?” [is] Is the quality of their relationships better? “All of these qualitative things that look at families and children and individuals are something that a legislative perspective would never consider.”
Age-restricted platforms in Australia were required from 10 December to prove to eSafety that they had taken reasonable steps to prevent people under the age of 16 from creating or maintaining accounts. Failure to comply carries the risk of a fine of up to $49.5 million.
Despite Inman Grant approved All 10 age-restricted platforms were compliant with the legislation on January 16, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said more than 4.7 million accounts had been removed across all age-restricted platforms, with reports of loopholes and stonewalling on platforms when cheating was flagged by parents, sparking concerns that the law was a purely symbolic gesture.
But Inman Grant said instant action is not the way tech regulation works: “Especially when we’re talking about 10 of the largest and most powerful companies in the world being involved in a social experiment that they don’t want to be a part of or want to be successful in… [because] Then it will become the norm for them.”
Platforms included in Australia’s under-16 social media ban
- Blue Sky
- ByteDance: Limon 8, TikTok
- Meta: Facebook, Instagram, Topics
- Google: YouTube
- Kick in
- on Snapchat
- Twitch
- wizz
- X (formerly Twitter)
Inman Grant is liaising with government leaders from around the world, including the UK and France, who want to implement similar legislation in their countries.
The findings of the new study, conducted in partnership with Stanford University’s Social Media Lab and an academic advisory group of 11 health, education and technology experts, will be published in phases starting this year.
The Federal Communications Department is currently reviewing social media minimum age legislation.
The eSafety Commissioner expects the assessment results to be a source of evidence for duplications of international policies, in addition to a landmark social media addiction civil case in Los Angeles in which Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg was questioned on the witness stand this week.
Meta, which disagrees with Australia’s ban but has long argued that a user’s age should be verified before downloading an app.
This would force Apple and Google, which control the dominant mobile operating systems and app stores, to impose age restrictions on certain experiences. Inman Grant sees this as “pointing the other way and avoiding responsibility.”
The eSafety Commissioner expects a second round of compliance notices from age-restricted platforms next week. A directions hearing is approaching in Reddit’s appeal of the ban in the Supreme Court, and the Commonwealth is expected to respond to a separate challenge from the Digital Freedom Project filed this month by 15-year-olds Macy Neyland and Noah Jones.
Bronte Gossling is a reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, WAtoday and Brisbane Times.Connect via email.
