Australia has become the first country to ban social media for children under the age of 16, with the bill passing in the last hour of Parliament for the year despite opposition from the crossbench and some Coalition senators.
The controversial Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill passed into law by 34 votes to 19 at a late-night sitting of the Senate on Thursday, having cleared the House of Representatives by a wide margin on Wednesday.
The bill, which was introduced to Parliament for the first time just last week, will require designated social media platforms to take “reasonable steps” to prevent under-16s from holding an account or face fines of up to $50 million.
Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Elon Musk’s X, Snapchat and Reddit are among the platforms that will be expected to “introduce systems and settings” 12 months after passage of the bill. Messaging services like Facebook Message Kids are exempt.
But it is unclear how the ban will be implemented, with the age verification, age estimation and age inference methods still to be tested in a forthcoming age assurance trial.
As had been foreshadowed in recent days, the Coalition sided with the government during a short 11-th hour debate on Thursday to support the bill after securing amendments through an brief Senate inquiry process earlier in the week.
Government amendments include changes to prevent social media platforms from compelling the use of a government Digital ID or other government IDs, although IDs will still be accepted if platforms offer other age assurance mechanisms.
Labor Senator Jenny McAllister said that the amendment means that government Digital IDs and government-issued physical IDs are “not… the only means, the only choice offered to a potential user”.
“What this amendment seeks to is… ensure that on ever occasion when a person is asked to engage in an age assurance process, they have a choice,” Senator McAllister said.
“And it enlivens the obligations on technology companies to utilise the technology capabilities that they already possess to undertake this work and to make sure these platforms are safe, and that people are using them in an appropriate way.”
Despite the support of the Coalition, Liberal Senator Alex Antic and National Senator Matt Canavan crossed the floor to vote against the ban originally proposed by opposition leader Peter Dutton.
Senator Canavan, who unsuccessfully moved amendments to narrow the definition of social media and give an option to parents to consent to their child using social media, described the bill as an “absolute outrage and a stich up of grand proportions”.
“A whole generation of Australians have watched this saga, this sordid saga play out over the past week and be completely disillusioned with their democratic process that they should have an involvement in,” he said.
“I mean, maybe we’ve scheduled the debate for 10:30pm on the last day of school because we know that all the people that will be impacted by this ban will be in bed. Its past their bedtime.”
Liberal Senator Alex Antic also spoke out against the bill, which he said was a “disaster waiting to happen”, as “we don’t know if it’s going to work, and we don’t know if it will have any impact on the problem they’re trying to trying to solve here”.
“The Prime Minister and the Minister for Communications have boasted that the passing of this bill will make Australia a world leader in online safety,” Senator Antic said.
“Well, they’re wrong, because if this bill passes, we won’t be leading the world in online safety we’ll be leading ourselves and those naive enough to follow us down the road to further digital authoritarianism.”
Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young described the bill – and the process leading up to its passage – as a “sham” that would give parents lull parents into a “false sense of security”.
“It doesn’t actually make social media safer for young people, and that’s the devastating thing about this, because we know that there are families who are struggling with this,” she said.
Senators from the Greens, United Australia Party and One Nation voted against the bill, as well as Independents Jacqui Lambie, Gerard Rennick, Fatima Payman and Tammy Tyrrell.
Amendments put forward by the Greens, Independent Senator David Pocock and – all but one amendment – from Senator Canavan were voted down.
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