NSW and South Australia’s Premiers say they will limit young people’s access to social media after the success of a phone ban in schools and a lack of action from tech giants, declaring safety won’t be left to ‘‘unelected billionaires living in Silicon Valley”.
“We’ve got the right to be suspicious of the impact social media is having on our society and our young people in particular,” NSW Premier Chris Minns said at a social media summit in Sydney on Thursday.
“Our first responsibility should be to do no harm. A healthy scepticism doesn’t make you backward or nostalgic or some kind of modern Luddite.”
The summit, which continues on Friday in Adelaide, has been organised by the state governments as they move to ban young people from social media and as the federal government trials age assurance technology to explore limits at a national level.
The South Australian government is moving ahead with plans to ban children under 14 from social media, and will require 14- and 15-year-olds to get parental consent to open accounts.
“This isn’t an option anymore,” South Australian premier Peter Malinauskas said at the summit.
“The results are in; the science is settled. We know for a fact that social media has changed childhood, and it is doing our children harm.”
Studies have linked the extended use of social media to poor mental health, but some experts say there is not yet a strong enough evidence base.
Premier Minns, who wants a similar age ban as soon as possible, says the state’s prohibition of students’ mobile phones in schools has provided “overwhelming” evidence of the harms that technology can cause young people.
“The impacts been massive since the ban,” he said. “Teachers have reported a reduction in behavioural issues, fewer suspensions, higher attendance rates, less bullying in the school room and in the school yard. And we’ve seen more concentration in our classrooms [and] stronger connections outside of it.”
He told the summit the phone ban has proven that communities can still exercise control over “the incursion of technology in our lives” and mitigate risks to individuals and social cohesion.
“We cannot and we should not outsource these questions to what are effectively unelected billionaires living in Silicon Valley,” the NSW Premier said.
Mr Malinauskas, whose government is finalising an Australian first legislative framework to enact the ban, said the state has a duty to protect young people from “outside forces” that could deny them “optimism and infectious youthfulness”.
“We’ve regulated access to a whole range of products and services [like] alcohol, drugs, cigarettes. We do so in the knowledge that legislation is a blunt tool. It is not perfect. It doesn’t solve any every problem. We also know it can make a difference.”
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