Australia’s social media ban on under-16s has been in place since December 10 – Image: David Gray/AFP
Germany has joined the growing list of EU nations that are considering banning children from social media. Australia has banned youths from social media since December — and its example has lessons for EU governments.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz thinks that social media regulations could help prevent “personality deficits and problems in the social behavior of young people.” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez wants to protect children from the “digital wild west.” And French President Emmanuel Macron has insisted that “the emotions of our children and teenagers are not for sale or to be manipulated.”
Though no European country has fully implemented a child social media ban, the intent is clear and the wheels are in motion in many places. Norway, Greece, the UK, Denmark, Italy and the Netherlands are among a host of European countries discussing some form of ban, while the EU has increasingly moved toward supporting the principle.
Many governments are likely to look to the experience of Australia, which introduced a world-first social media ban for under-16s in December. This policy relied on policing by the social media firms. Sites including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, X, YouTube and Reddit — which has filed a lawsuit in opposition to the ban — are now age-restricted but online gaming and messaging sites such as WhatsApp are not.
The country’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, reported last month that social media companies “removed access to about 4.7 million accounts identified as belonging to children under 16 in the first half of December” but provided no more recent figures after a DW request.
Headline figures not the whole story
Tama Leaver, a professor of internet studies at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, told DW that the headline figures, which have caught the eye of many in Europe, don’t necessarily tell the whole story.
“We don’t have a breakdown of that number, nor do we know how many new accounts — possibly from teens pretending to be older — were created over the same period of time,” he said.
He added that, anecdotally, “many young people aged 13-15 seem to have circumvented the ban, while others seem to have been banned from some platforms and not others.” This is an observation backed by media reports and other experts. “On a technical level, the limitations and imprecise nature of trying to verify age using selfies and other tools was also pretty much as inaccurate as most people expected in advance,” Leaver said.
Governments ‘jumping too quickly’ to follow Australia?
The flurry of European countries, and others around the world such as India and Malaysia, keen to follow Australia’s lead is a surprise to Susan Sawyer, from Australia’s largest child health research center, the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute.
“I had expected there would be much more of a watchful expectancy of the results of the Australian ban before governments would be jumping in quite as quickly,” she told DW. “We don’t know what the effects of the ban are going to be and we need to evaluate this carefully. Governments need to be careful to avoid thinking that social media bans are a silver bullet to this problem.”
Leaver agrees that Europe would be better watching and waiting for now. “No one really knows what difference this ban will make, but we know for sure it will take years, not months, before a measurable cultural change will exist, if it exists at all. It would make so much more sense for other countries to wait and see what happens in Australia, and really see what lessons can be learnt, before rushing through their own imprecise legislation,” he said.
Has the social media ban confused teens?
Some of Sawyer’s research, which was heard by the Australian Senate Committee ahead of the ban, found that 10–13-year-olds showed the most adverse effects of social media usage, particularly girls. While the age limits of bans vary in European proposals, she said that any changes will likely be a “slow burn”.
“Over the next couple of years the current generation of six to 10-year-olds who don’t yet have access to a smartphone or social media will be older at the time that their parents first allow them access. It’s going to be a change in social norms that’s not going to take place overnight.”
Leaver advocates a staggered introduction of any bans imposed elsewhere and a longer, deeper period of consultation with children.
“The most confused group are those 13-15 year olds who already had social media accounts, were booted off the platforms, and then will come back on at 16,” he said. “It would have made a lot more sense to grandfather the rules, so under 13s can’t get accounts until 16, but those with existing accounts keep access. I think a lot of 13-15 year olds feel like the ban was done to them, rather than with them.”
Can the Australian model even work in Europe?
Given the speed of progress towards bans in Europe and the lack of children’s voices in the conversation thus far, that would likely also be a concern on the continent.
But, Dr. Stephan Dreyer from the Leibniz Institute for Media Research in Hamburg, told DW, that, to his mind, Germany and Europe don’t require such bans anyway.
He said the European Digital Services Act, passed a year ago, addresses many safety concerns and that the way EU law works means obliging the social media companies to police a ban in individual countries would be tricky. While there are different means to achieve similar ends within Europe, he sees the data as unclear.
“The lesson for Europe is cautionary. Australia illustrates the gap between the political appeal of decisive prohibition and the technical and rights-related complexities of implementation. Age verification at scale requires either comprehensive control infrastructure or probabilistic profiling, with both approaches showing deep intrusions into the rights of all users. Europe, with its stronger fundamental rights frameworks and the GDPR, would face these tensions even more acutely. We should learn from Australia’s difficulties, not rush to replicate them.”
DW.com/NAN 19-2-26
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