Australia’s under-16 social media ban

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0:40Hello, I'm Luke Jones. Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. In BBC OS Conversations, we bring people together to share their experiences. This time, we have a question almost every parent of teenage kids grapples with. Should you ban your children from social media? In Australia, a new law comes in this week aiming to prevent anyone under 16 from using platforms including TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat. The ban is designed to protect teenagers from harmful content and other risks such as cyberbullying and grooming. And surveys suggest it is popular with many parents.

1:20But the legislation has been challenged by social media companies and some young campaigners have argued it disregards children's rights. Later, we will bring together three young Australians who, between them, have tens of thousands of social media followers. What impact will the ban have on them and their friends? First, though, we brought together two families who live in the east of Australia, in New South Wales. Sherry-Anne supports the social media ban. She was joined for a conversation by her 13-year-old son, Addison. And Courtney, with her son, Kyan, who's also 13, are both content creators on TikTok.

2:00My kids actually suggested me being a creator. Obviously, they saw something that I didn't. And yeah, so I started and then they started. And it's just sort of like a family interest. And now it is sort of like a job because there is money to make. Is it good money? Well, yeah, I don't have to wake up in the morning early anymore. And I've made more money than I probably ever would going to work. Yeah, it's worked for us. Let's put it that way. Okay, but you started being a creator. But then, Kyan, when did you start as well? And what age were you when you started? I started about maybe a year and a half ago.

2:36How old were you then? Twelve and a half. And what kind of content? We were about eleven and a half. He's 13 now. He's a bit confused. It's not maths content you're doing, Kyan. What are you doing? I used to do technology content and I sort of switched over to like more lifestyle, just more of my daily life a little bit, like similar to what my mum does. I get a couple of like 100 ,000 views maybe here to there. Sherry-Ann and Addison, you're on the line as well. You're not creators, but you're users, viewers. I mean, Sherry-Ann, what kind of apps do you use? I would class myself as a mum. I've got four children.

3:12So I've sort of been seeing what's been developing over the last sort of 10 years. So my eldest is 24. So he sort of came in at the very beginning of the whole iPhones thing. And we started off giving him a Nokia. And then slowly as the boys have sort of matured through peer pressure, where all the parents have bought their kids iPhones, the school converting into everything going on laptops. even things like my son he does jiu-jitsu so for him to access information on timetables changing events going on that's all on instagram now he also uses a lot of snapchat because that's how they talk to each other the boys arrange meetups or they arrange to get online to play a game so So we're sort of exposed to it a lot.

4:09We have a lot of it in our house. We actually are a technology family. We're all in the industry. So my husband's IT, my older son's IT. It's not the technology. It's more how it's sort of slowly spiraling out of control. It's sort of like a drug. You feel like you've got this person coming into your house and selling something that you can't see. You can't trap it. And unless you're on top of your children monitoring everything they're doing, which invades their privacy, you've got to have trust there. They've got to have freedom. It's a really hard balance and it's a full time job. It drives you insane as a mother.

4:53Is your child safe? What are they viewing? What are they being exposed to? Addison, I wonder what kind of social media apps do you use? And if you imagine your waking hours, how many of those would you say you are on some kind of social media? Can I just say when I know and when he's secretly doing it, that would be interesting. Yeah, the truth please, Addison. The main things I mostly use is around Instagram, Snapchat mostly. I don't really use that many apps. But I play some games, I guess, yeah. Do you know how long you're on social media? Maybe. This is when it's going to get a bit... Like two hours, maybe?

5:37Two hours. I do not believe you. I'm on for more than two hours. I'm trying to save myself here, so... But OK, don't put a number on it, but do you think it's too much, too little, or a normal amount? Too much, too much, too much. Too much, OK. Which I guess is why lots of people have been calling for this ban of social media for under-16s. Courtney, how do you feel about it? We're pretty frustrated in the house. We're pretty, I guess, saddened in a way because the kids have really, well, I have four kids here, two, three that are on TikTok and have made money from being on the app and learnt so many different skills and all that sort of stuff that comes along with it.

6:17Just for now to be told, well, no, everything you've worked for is going to be erased. We've worked as a family. we've had communication like over multiple of conversations in regards to one, not become addicted online, two, how to handle situations. And we've been through it all. Not all my kids are just free from the curse of online, the addictiveness and stuff like that. But I just think we've put in a lot of work to make sure that our kids are online safely, if that makes sense. and it doesn't really affect their lives in a negative way anymore. I totally respect what you've said. And we, again, have done all the hard work.

6:58So we've used every app under the sun, you know, monitoring. They can only have so much screen time. They can't access different websites, all of those things. The thing that worries me is how they get the peer pressure from school, how their whole world is screens. so they go to school they're on a laptop they leave that they're on the phone you know there's not very much downtime without them constantly if they want to have a normal social life feeling that they have to go on some sort of screen and even last week my husband was doom scrolling or whatever they do and this image came up this horrific image and it was probably only there for all of three seconds but you can't unsee that and our kids have got the rest of their lives to mature become adults but as young teenagers when their brains are developing they don't have the life skills they don't have the insight to know what is right what is wrong is someone telling me something and that is actually correct a lot of my mates have been like upset about it saying this is not the way they should be doing it saying like they should be doing 13 and under it's a bit funny like just under I've been trying to get around the facial recognition though haven't you boys yeah a lot of us have kind of figure out a way can I just ask a question.

8:37Just out of curiosity, you say that you have a business. How do you make that money? Like how does your son make that money? How does he generate it? He predominantly makes his money online gaming. So he doesn't do it during Monday to Friday because school will always come first in this house. But he'll game for about two hours or two or three hours on a Friday and Saturday night. Often I am there with him. Majority of the time I am with him. And he's earned, how much did you earn? $1 ,500 in a period of an hour and a half, just one gaming stream. And then all that money goes into his bank account.

9:17So we really were looking forward to, I guess, him not having to go out and get a job at McDonald's or somewhere like that, and then have more time to focus on his schoolwork. No, I was just curious because I've gone through that phase as well, but we're probably the opposite to you. We were the ones that kicked our kids out to go and work in cafes and things and get social interaction that way. But, yeah, I get that. That's fine. There's a lot of kids that, like, are younger than they, for example, that, like, can't live without screens, which I find kind of insane. And I feel like that's a big problem.

9:52Like, I think that's where I agree with it, because I know there's a lot of kids that are addicted to screens, can't get off it, can't live without it. And that's where I agree with the band, because if they need to get a job, for example, they need to know how to be social and talk to people. And if they're stuck on computers all day, they're not going to be as social as kids that are running around, doing soccer, doing, for example, sports and stuff. I hear what he tells me when he comes home from school. I feel sorry for the teachers. They're definitely dealing with the social side of it. You know, kids that really are not getting the attention or getting the guidance that they need because they are being left to go on social media, do whatever they want, game until one o 'clock in the morning, not understand the consequences of what is actually happening.

10:46I think it's going to be a hard road. You sound quite down with it all. I think I'm just frustrated because there's a lot of good parents out there that really do try and keep a balance. You know, they're trying to keep up with technology, keep our kids engaged, not isolate them from being able to contact their friends via social media. but on the same token you've got a percentage of adults that are really just hands off and you've got these poor kids that have got their phone they go to bed and their phones in their room or on a computer all night and then they go to school and they're tired and they're not learning those social interactions you know they don't even give you eye contact sometimes some of these younger kids I can just see it it's very sad I think that there's a lot of parents out there that don't know what their kids are like.

11:43They've neglected, I guess, their duties in a way, or maybe it's just too hard. Life is hard. I'm not ever going to mum shame ever, but life is hard and people's circumstances are difficult. So I think this may make certain families, it may be easier. I can totally understand where we're coming from is we are not like that. And I believe that, you know, we feel like we've done everything right and we're still having this taken off us. I don't think it's a one size fits all. Every family uses technology differently. And I think that there's going to be so many jobs later on if you cut the kids off from learning how to navigate themselves safely online.

12:27And then once they turn 16, all of a sudden, boom, they're thrown in the deep end. And yeah, I just would like to see how that works out because my whole thing is guidance, not restrictions. I agree with the guidance, but I also like what is happening because it's helping me. Yeah. You know, I like that it is backing up what I say to my children. I like that it's taking some strain away from them. They can have downtime because they know that they are limited to how many different applications are available to them because they're growing daily. We have problems now. You know, someone sends you a message.

13:13Was that on WhatsApp? Was that a messenger? Was that on Facebook? Was that an email? You know, we all do it as adults, like trying to find that bit of information that we send to us. So imagine if you're a young teenager and you've got all these different avenues for communication. I just think they need some breathing space. Sherry-Anne and her son Addison in conversation with Courtney and her son Kyan discussing Australia's new law banning under-16s for most social media platforms. I'm Luke Jones and you're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

13:59I've spent the last three decades trying to better understand money across the boardroom, the newsroom and the trading floor. That's longer than most podcast hosts have been alive. But even though I've got questions, join me, Merrin's Upset Web, every week for my show, Merrin Talks Money from Bloomberg Podcasts, where I have in-depth conversations with fund managers, strategists and experts about how markets really work. And join me for a separate episode where I answer listener questions and how to make those markets work for you. Follow Merrin Talks Money on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.

14:33Over the past few days, Meta, which owns Instagram, Facebook and Threads, has already begun removing Australian children from its platforms. Under this new law, companies face fines of up to 33 million US dollars if they fail to take what the government describes as reasonable steps to stop under-16s from having accounts. But there are fears that some children will simply move to other, less well-known platforms, or just sign up with fake IDs or IDs they got off an adult. For our second conversation, we're going to hear from three young people who create content on social media and between them have tens of thousands of followers.

15:14Leonardo is in Melbourne and is aged 18 so he won't be affected by the ban but he has grown up using social media mainly for an Australian news website he founded aged 11 called Six News. We brought him together with friends Darcy and Ella who are in Brisbane. They're 14 years old and they are performers enjoying singing acting and dancing online and just to warn you in our conversation they do discuss the suicide of a friend. There's so much body positivity on social media. There's so much good content. And you only come across the harmful content if you try to find it because it's an algorithm.

15:53Unless you're looking for the harmful content, it's not going to come up for you. And cyberbullying, there's a lot of ways to prevent that. You can turn off your comments. You can remove certain comments. The positives of social media is just like there's so much space to express yourself. and if you are someone who doesn't feel like there's other people like you or doesn't you don't feel like accepted maybe where you are there's so many people on social media who will help you find like you and like there's so much people who have like Darcy and I both did a casting call for a Disney movie and we found out about that through social media and we both want to pursue that kind of path without social media we wouldn't have found out about that and we wouldn't have had the opportunity to audition for a Disney movie.

16:37Like there's so much, especially people in the arts, career paths through social media. I find a lot of the shows that I want to audition for, I see the audition notices on Instagram. If I didn't have Instagram, I really don't know how I'm going to find all the audition notices. Can I just jump in on that point about harmful content, which I think is a really good one to make because that is kind of the area that the government's been talking about. And look, I've seen the kind of harmful content online, obviously, but I think a really key point to make with this whole ban is that while it's on there and people, everyone kind of agrees that it is on there, you know, it's not being removed under this ban and the government has tools at its disposal that could be used for content takedown.

17:14That's not really happening. And it just means that it's kind of supposedly going to be delayed when a young person will see this content. And it unfortunately could have the same harmful effect that the Prime Minister has talked about. So I'd really be happy to see harmful content addressed. I just don't see that being done under this ban, which has really been one of my areas of opposition to it. But of course there are net benefits and net negatives of social media. That's exactly what I've been saying. Like the harmful content isn't being removed, but we are, and we're not the ones putting the harmful content there.

17:42It's not our fault that the harmful content's there, it's the apps. So why are we being the ones removed when we'll still find a way to get to that harmful content, no matter the ban or no ban? It's the content that needs to be removed, not us. isn't there also the issue of it just stealing quite a bit of your time and even if everything on social media was perfectly pleasant and not harmful it is distracting it's maybe stopping you living life it's meaning you're connected to people you know and people you don't know 24 7 which maybe isn't that healthy there are concerns about what it means for people's mental health what it means for their ability to concentrate what about any of that um yeah i would definitely say that yeah people do it does sometimes take a bit of time with people which is I think why parents need to be more monitoring and making sure that kids aren't spending so much time on the platforms and honestly with me like I feel like my connections with people and things like that actually have gotten stronger through social media and I've spent more time with people through social media and I've organized things through social media obviously I'm talking to BBC through social media.

18:50Like there's so much it's given me like, but I'm lucky and I know Darcy's the same. Our parents are very careful that we're not spending so much time on social media. Yeah, it's good because I think it is in the parents' control whether they set screen time limits or whether the kids have enough self-control to put the device away and go do something without looking at the screen. So I think it's very much in yours and your parents' hand, not really the social media company. What about the point about being connected to your friends 24-7 and particularly bullying, which we know can be rife on social media and, you know, back in my day and people older than me, you would leave all of that when you left school.

19:29But with social media, it just continues and continues and continues, Darcy. Yeah, I actually had a friend who took her life last year because of cyberbullying on Snapchat. And this is just a real life example of the effects that social media can have on people. But I think there are definitely ways to prevent this from happening, such as blocking people or many other different ways that could stop happening. I'm sorry to hear that. That sounds absolutely awful. Yeah. Did it change the way that you see social media? I think it did definitely for me and all the other people who knew her because it just showed us that things like this can actually happen.

20:09It's not just a myth. I would make the point, and I'm also sorry to hear that, that one element we really haven't heard about, I think, unfortunately, among this debate is that there are a lot of vulnerable young kids who also use social media for really important reasons. Marginalised backgrounds, remote areas, for instance, where maybe they don't feel safe at home for whatever reason. and maybe they don't have the opportunity to have many friends literally just because of their location or any other personal circumstance. But they're able to find connections online. They're able to post about their interests.

20:40They're able to find people their own age in safe ways online. That's been taken away as well, and I'm really, really concerned about that. I'm concerned that that hasn't been part of the broader conversation because, I mean, I know one of my friends and someone who also works alongside me at Six News is in regional Queensland, right? really remote Queensland, I'd say, and wouldn't be able to do anything she's able to do with elections, which is where she covers at Six News, without social media. So there are really elements that can be important for young people to have. And again, I just think that this total blanket in or out approach just isn't the right move.

21:16And there are a lot of other options that I really would have preferred to be seen, and certainly a lot more consultation on this, because I mean, I'm glad we're having these conversations now, we're hearing some young people, but it's something that really should have been done more than a year ago by the government before it was actually passed in the Senate. And you mentioned there's Six News. Just explain that for me. It's a sort of online news platform, but where it's kids who are reporting. And you started doing that quite young, I think. Yeah, so I started that when I was 11 years old. Now, obviously, under the age of the time, my parents would watch my, I think, similar circumstances, what we've also had here.

21:46My parents would watch the account, and then they were able to take a back step once I turned 13 and they were a bit more confident. But yeah, it's entirely volunteers, young people, some a bit older than me, some a bit younger. It's been going for about six, seven years at this point, which is really incredible. I'm amazed that we're still doing this, but it's entirely run by young people. Wouldn't we call it a youth news platform in a sense that we only cover youth issues, but certainly one that is focused on a lot of young people for obvious reasons and also somewhere where we have a lot of young people seeing us because they're seeing their peers presenting the news in a way that isn't talking down to them or patronising or anything like that.

22:20The elephant in the room here is that, Leonardo, you're 18, so you're not covered by this ban. You're actually fine. Ella and Darcy, you're the ones who are going to have your account suspended or frozen, I think, depending on what platform it is. What are you, Darcy, planning to do? I think I will just go along with the ban because I'll only have to wait just over a year. And for me, social media, I don't spend that much time scrolling. The only thing that I am sad about is that I won't get to express my creativity for everyone to watch. That's the only thing that I'm really bummed that I won't be able to do for over a year.

22:57You won't try and get around it? Well, I know there's going to be the apps, but I just think that once we move to them, the government is going to ban them and it'll just turn into a cycle. So I don't, I really don't think there's going to be a good way to get around the ban. Everyone's going to get around it. Everyone. All of my friends are already getting the notification saying, verify your age, and they've just put their parents' face in. It's so simple to get around. Everyone's going to stay on, and that's when it gets bad because that's when people are hiding it from their parents. But the thing is, like, most of my friends, if they have social media currently, their parents know about it anyway, so they're just going to, here's my government ID, just put it into the thing, and there you go, there's your account.

23:38All of my friends aren't even worried about it because they know they're going to find a way around it. The people who are mindlessly scrolling are the people who aren't going to suffer or have any consequences of the ban because they'll still be able to scroll for ages and do whatever they do because they'll still be able to find a way around it. It's the people like us, me, or Darcy, whatever, who use it to express themselves and use it for good who are going to be punished by the ban because we could possibly lose our accounts. My account is verified. My account is underneath my mum's age. It is fully my mum.

24:11My mum manages the account 100%, so I actually won't be taken off the platform. I'll probably lose around 10 ,000, 20 ,000 followers, but it's kind of upsetting to me because it's like living in a small town in Australia with, like, big dreams is like it's a step back from, like, someone who lives in LA and social media and my social media platform gaining 30 ,000 followers in, like, six months makes it that much closer. Getting that taken away is quite upsetting, and I feel like it's just, it makes it so much harder. Ella, Darcy and Leonardo in Australia. Contemplating a future without social media, perhaps.

24:49Thank you very much to them and to all of our guests this week. Me and you listening and many around the world will be watching very closely to see how this Australian experiment plays out. That is it from us. I'm Luke Jones and you've been listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

25:13I've spent the last three decades trying to better understand money across the boardroom, the newsroom and the trading floor. That's longer than most podcast hosts have been alive. But even though I've got questions, join me, Merrin's Upset Web, every week for my show, Merrin Talks Money from Bloomberg Podcasts, where I have in-depth conversations with fund managers, strategists and experts about how markets really work. And join me for a separate episode where I answer listener questions and how to make those markets work for you. Follow Merrin Talks Money on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.