Australia plans total ban on social media for under-16s

The Australian government is planning to lock most children out of social media completely, backed by a general purpose age-verification system of the kind that can be put to other uses.

Australia is trialing an age-verification system to assist in blocking children from accessing social media platforms, as part of a range of measures that include some of the toughest controls imposed by any country to date.

"Social media is doing harm to our kids and I'm calling time on it," Albanese told a news conference.

Albanese cited the risks to physical and mental health of children from excessive social media use, in particular the risks to girls from harmful depictions of body image, and misogynist content aimed at boys.

"If you're a 14-year-old kid getting this stuff, at a time where you're going through life's changes and maturing, it can be a really difficult time and what we're doing is listening and then acting," he said.

It's saddening because social media is a way for young people to find themselves and find the others—anonymously, too—and to find support they might not have at home and in their daily lives. But the companies that run the big social media platforms are so rapacious and manipulative that they pose an overwheming threat to the wellbeing of everyone trapped in the engagement circus—and kids are just the start of it.

Maybe this sort of legislation will have the beneficial effect of pushing the young, the marginalized and the indifferent to quieter, more offbeat places online that the law won't be interested in—and which aren't constantly flooded with terrible content. But it will just as likely benefit the major sites because of the costs related to compliance with the law.