Although no European country has yet completely banned children’s social media, the intention is clear and the process is underway in many places. Norway, Greece, the UK, Denmark, Italy and the Netherlands, among other Europeans, are discussing some form of ban, while the EU is increasingly moving towards supporting the principle.
All those countries are likely to take note of the experience of Australia, which imposed the world’s first social media ban for under-16s in December. This policy relied on policing by social media firms. Sites including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok,
The country’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, reported last month that social media companies “removed access to approximately 4.7 million accounts identified as belonging to children under 16 in the first half of December” but did not provide any more recent figures following a request by DW.
Headline figures aren’t the whole story
Toma Leaver, a professor of Internet studies at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, told DW that the key figures, which have caught the attention of many in Europe, do not necessarily tell the whole story.
“We don’t have details on that number, nor do we know how many new accounts – possibly by teenagers pretending to be adults – were created at the same time,” he said.
He added that, anecdotally, “many youth aged 13–15 have circumvented the ban, while others have been banned from some platforms and not others.” This is an observation supported by media reports and other experts. “At a technical level, the limitations and vague nature of trying to verify age using selfies and other tools was also largely wrong, as most people had already expected,” Lever said.
Governments ‘moving too quickly’ for Australia to follow?
The eagerness of European countries and other countries around the world such as India and Malaysia to follow Australia has come as a surprise to Susan Sawyer of the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Australia’s largest child health research centre.
“I had expected the consequences of the Australian ban to be much longer to be seen before governments intervene immediately,” he told DW. “We don’t know what the effects of a ban are going to be and we need to evaluate it carefully. Governments need to be careful to avoid thinking that banning social media is a silver bullet for this problem.”
Leavers agrees that Europe would be better off watching and waiting for now. He said, “No one really knows what difference this ban will make, but we certainly know that it will take years, not months, if even that, for a measurable cultural change to occur. It would make more sense for other countries to wait and see what happens in Australia, and really see what lessons can be learned before pushing through their own obscure legislation.”
Have restrictions on social media left teenagers confused?
Some of Sawyer’s research, which was heard by an Australian Senate committee Before the ban, it was found that 10-13 year olds showed the most adverse effects of social media use, especially girls. While the age limits for restrictions vary across European proposals, he said any changes would likely be “slow-moving”.
“In the next few years the current generation of six to 10-year-olds, who do not yet have access to smartphones or social media, will grow up to the point where their parents first allow them. This is going to be a shift in social norms that is not going to happen overnight.”
Leaver advocates a phased implementation of any restrictions imposed elsewhere and a long, deep period of consultation with children.
“The most confused group are those 13-15-year-olds who already had social media accounts, were kicked off the platform and then will return when they turn 16,” he said. “This would have made a lot more sense to grandfather in the rules, so people under 13 can’t get accounts until they turn 16, but those who have existing accounts retain access. I think a lot of 13-15 year olds feel like the restrictions are imposed on them, not on them.”
Can the Australian model also work in Europe?
Given the pace of progress towards restrictions in Europe and the lack of children’s voices in the negotiations so far, this will likely be a matter of concern on the continent as well.
But Dr. Stefan Dreyer of the Leibniz Institute for Media Research in Hamburg told DW that, in his view, Germany and Europe do not need such restrictions anyway.
He said the European Digital Services Act, passed a year ago, addresses many security concerns and the way EU law works means it would be difficult to force social media companies to enforce bans policed in individual countries. While there are different means to achieve similar goals within Europe, he considers the data unclear.
“The lesson for Europe is cautionary. Australia illustrates the difference between the political appeal of blanket prohibition and the technical and rights-related complexities of implementation. Large-scale age verification requires either extensive control infrastructure or probabilistic profiling, both approaches representing deep intrusions into the rights of all users. Europe, with its strong fundamental rights framework and the GDPR, will face these tensions even more acutely. We should learn from Australia’s difficulties, not rush to repeat them.”
Edited by: Jess Smee
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