Australian lawmakers passed landmark rules to ban under 16s from social media on Thursday, approving one of the world’s toughest crackdowns on popular sites like Facebook, Instagram, and X.
The legislation ordering social media firms to take “reasonable steps” to prevent young teens from having accounts was passed in the Senate with 34 votes in favor and 19 against.
The firms — who face fines of up to Aus$50 million (US$32.5 million) for failing to comply — have described the laws as “vague”, “problematic” and “rushed”.
The new rules will now return to the lower house — where lawmakers already backed the bill on Wednesday — for one final approval before it is all but certain to become law.
Speaking during the Senate debate, Greens politician Sarah Hanson-
Young said the ban would not “make social media safer for young people”.
She said it was “devastating” that young people were “finding themselves addicted to these dangerous algorithms”.
Center-left Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, eyeing an election early next year, has enthusiastically championed the new rules and rallied Aussie parents to get behind it.
In the run-up to the vote, he painted social media as “a platform for peer pressure, a driver of anxiety, a vehicle for scammers and, worst of all, a tool for online predators”.
He wanted young Australians “off their phones and onto the footy and cricket field, the tennis and netball courts, in the swimming pool”.
But young social media users, like 12-year-old Angus Lydom, are not impressed.
“I’d like to keep using it. And it’ll be a weird feeling to not have it, and be able to talk to all my friends at home,” he told AFP.
Many are likely to try to find ways around it.
“I’ll find a way. And so will all my other friends” Lydom said.
Similarly, 11-year-old Elsie Arkinstall said there was still a place for social media, particularly for children wanting to watch tutorials about baking or art.
“Kids and teens should be able to explore those techniques because you can’t learn all those things from books,” she added.
