“I want to see kids off their devices and onto the footy fields and the swimming pools and the tennis courts,” Mr Albanese
told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.<\/p>\n
“We want them to have real experiences with real people because we know that social media is causing social harm.”<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n
The law would make Australia<\/strong> one of the first countries in the world to impose such an age restriction on social media.<\/p>\nMeta, which owns Facebook and Instagram and has a self-imposed minimum age of 13, said it wanted to empower young people to benefit from its platforms and provide parents tools to support them “instead of just cutting off access”.<\/p>\n
Four-fifths of Australia’s population of 26 million are on social media, according to tech industry figures, making it one of the world’s most online populations.<\/p>\n
It comes amid a parliamentary inquiry into social media’s effects on Australian society, which has heard about the poor mental health impacts on teenagers.<\/p>\n
But it has also heard concerns about whether a lower age limit could be enforced and whether it could inadvertently harm younger people by encouraging them to go online in secret.<\/p>\n
Australia’s internet regulator, the eSafety Commissioner, warned in a submission to the inquiry that “restriction-based approaches may limit young people’s access to critical support” and push them to “less regulated non-mainstream services”.<\/p>\n
DIGI, an industry body representing social media platforms, said the government should consider “expert voices such as the eSafety Commissioner … mental health experts, as well as LGBTQIA+ and other marginalised groups who have expressed concerns about bans so that we’re not unintentionally pushing our kids into unsafe, less visible parts of the internet”.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This post appeared first on sky.com<\/div>\n
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