Op-Ed: Australia’s push for an age limit on social media is looking kind of weird

The US Supreme Court heard arguments in a social media case involving free speech rights and government efforts to curb misinformation online – Copyright AFP/File Denis Charlet

The hostile alien world oddly known as “social” media is about to experience an experiment. Australia is about to put age limits on social media users. Whether it will work, or can work, is highly debatable.

The public is pretty much in favor of the ban. This move is a result of constant public complaints dating back decades. There’s a lot of sympathy for social media victims, and genuine fury at the lazy policies of social media platforms.

Breaches of the new laws will attract heavy fines. This is intended to be real regulation.

The ban is supposed to apply to kids under 14. Age verification trials are to be conducted in the next few months.

What’s weird about it is that this is massive regulation in an almost totally unknown area of law. This is statute law, not civil. That’s where the weirdness is likely to get difficult. It seems simple, but any lawsuit could get messy.

Can it work?

Note: I’m 1000% in favor of anything that makes online life safer and saner for kids. I’m not sure if this is the way to do it, though.

To be fair, some regulations and solid legal protection are fundamentally good ideas. Too much has gone wrong for too many kids over the years. Suicides due to social media issues are well known.

There’s a built-in flaw, though. Kids don’t like being treated like kids. “You’re too young” is the wrong button to push. If it’s forbidden, they’ll usually try it. That could be the undoing of this idea.  

The critical questions are fairly obvious:

What are the workarounds? There are always workarounds. Anyone not living under a rock knows you can always bypass lockouts. A friend aged 15 might be all they need.

Does this actually protect kids? It might shut out some things, but there are always apps, etc. as equally risky for young users.

Can things be nasty offline, too? Can you block out other types of harassment, like on the phone, for example?

Why aren’t kids trained to better manage social media? How does a tween know the difference between a hate group, a chatbot, or some random nut?

What about AI implications? Can AI simply be prompted to provide a social media feed?  

Could there be a black market for social media access? Fake verification IDs could be enough. That’d make things even worse.

What about access through external jurisdictions? Can you use a VPN or some other non-jurisdictional means to bypass the Australian laws?

Kids should be trained in social media. “These are the bad things, these are the dumb things, these are the dangerous things, and they’re usually the same things.” It’s a pretty simple single message.  

If this is a precedent for global social media, it’ll be a major upheaval.