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The newly enacted ban on the use of social media by adolescents under age 16 in Australia aims to “allow young people to grow and develop away and separate from social media pressures” and the addictive nature of the media, said a psychologist and teacher at an Australian Catholic university.
In spite of several benefits from social media – providing a way for young people to socialize and interact, and make, develop and maintain friendships and connections – the potential harms are serious enough to justify legal regulation, said Jonathan O'Neill, a lecturer in psychology at the University of Notre Dame in Fremantle, near Perth.
Late last month, the Australia parliament passed what The New York Times called ”one of the world’s most comprehensive measures aimed at safeguarding young people from potential hazards online.”
While many details are still unclear, such as how it will be enforced, the law gives tech companies a year to figure out a way to keep under-16-year-olds off sites like Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram and X.
Companies face fines up to $32 million for “systemic” failures to implement age requirements. Neither underage users nor their parents will face punishment for violations.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that YouTube and messaging apps including WhatsApp are expected to be exempt. Albanese said that the law puts Australia at the vanguard of efforts to protect the mental health and well-being of children from detrimental effects of social media, such as online hate or bullying.
The New York Times said that France last year passed a law requiring parental consent for social media users under 15, and it has been pushing for similar measures across the European Union. The US state of Florida this year imposed a ban for users under 14 and required parental consent for 14- and 15-year-olds.
In Canada, this past semester has seen new restrictions in various provinces on the use of cell phones in school. In Spain, a group called the Association for Mobile-Free Adolescence has been advocating for similar measures. A publication called Uppers cited data from a study at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, which found that "one in five young Spaniards spend more than two hours a day on TikTok and exceed the recommended threshold for the use of social networks, from which the risk of suffering from mental health problems may increase. The proportion of girls who are above this risk threshold (24.37%) is clearly higher than that of boys (15.45%)."
Waiting on the brain
O'Neill, at the University of Notre Dame in Fremantle, said that part of the rationale of the law is the need to wait until a young person's "brain, mind, and social skills have developed a little further before we give them access to these sorts of things."
The psychologist said that while social media can be a way for young people to access information and provide a “safe space for people to figure out a lot about themselves and aspects of identity,” it can also create isolation if users become “too dependent on interacting with the social world so they're less able to then interact in the non-online world.”
“Also, this social element of bullying and ostracizing young people is just as rampant, if not more so, in the online world than it is in the real world,” O’Neill told Aleteia.
He sees a lot of effects among clients in his private practice.
“I have a lot of younger clients. I have a lot of teenage clients. And a lot of them are completely absorbed in this online world and do experience things like being ostracized and bullying through Instagram direct message chats and Snapchat and these sorts of things. It's completely unmonitored.”
While O’Neill is “not convinced” the new law will work or make drastic changes in the way people interact with digital technology, “I think it's worth trying.”
O’Neill, 44, commented on the speed that digital technology has taken over.
“I think we've gone too far down the rabbit hole quicker than we realized,” he said. “We can never go backwards, but I do think we can kind of slow down a little and I think that's what this law is about.”
