Age checks for social media not ready says Australian Parliamentary Committee

An Australian parliamentary committee is recommending that the government delay the implementation of the country’s age assurance law for social media platforms.

In its report on the Internet Search Engine Services Online Safety Code and social media age assurance requirements, the Senate Standing Committee on Environment and Communications says there are “deep reservations about the privacy implications of requiring Australians to provide sensitive personal data to search engine services or social media companies.” For many worried about data collection, cybercrime and privacy, the trust is simply not there.

As such, “the committee recommends that the implementation of the Social Media Minimum Age obligation be delayed until 10 June 2026 to allow time for the issues in implementation and compliance to be properly considered and an education campaign for young people affected to be rolled out.”

Duty of care on social media platforms will be a hard sell

The report comes with three other recommendations, all of which point away from age assurance systems and toward more accountability for platforms in terms of how their products affect their users.

In particular, the committee “recommends that the Australian Government legislate a digital duty of care to make online platforms safer for all users,” and that it “legislate to prohibit platforms from harvesting and exploiting the data of minors and protect young people from targeted, unsolicited advertisements and algorithms as a matter of priority, with a view for this to apply to all users in the long-term.”

While they point away from age verification, these recommendations are conceptually sound, in that they aim to get at the root problem: social media as it exists now is largely bad for people. However, they rest on the assumption that companies like Meta and X will obey the law – or rather, that it is even possible for them to operate without relying on harmful features to retain users.

Neither of these notions should be taken for granted. Meta has shown that its response to any law limiting its operations is to lobby and litigate. Moreover, there is apparently no desire among Silicon Valley’s billionaires to retool their visions in the interest of the public good – in part because they have the support of the U.S. administration. The “move fast and break things” guys will not go gently into a duty of care, defined as “a legal duty to take reasonable care to avoid unreasonable harm to others.” One needs only to look at the force with which they are pushing large language models (LLMs) on the world, despite mounting concern that their products will coach kids into suicide or otherwise unhinge people from reality.

Education, literacy suggestion puts onus back on users

The fourth recommendation is likewise noble, but somewhat contradictory. “The committee recommends that the eSafety Commissioner roll out an education program, including through schools, that delivers clear information to young people about the platforms that are covered by the Social Media Minimum Age obligation and what the impacts on young people will be, as well as information about digital literacy and online safety.” Here we have the standard idea that, if people are aware of the risks, they’ll be immune – and that it’s up to people to look out for themselves, while the platforms are allowed to continue doing what they do.

Article Topics

age verification  |  Australia  |  Australia age verification  |  eSafety Commissioner  |  Online Safety Act (Australia)  |  social media