Half past twelve at night and after a heated debate, the Australian Senate passed a ban on social media for children under 16 years old last week.
A platform for group pressure, a source of anxiety, a tool for scammers, and, worst of all, a tool for online criminals, said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese before the vote and urged young people to put down their phones and head to the sports fields.
He represents the centre-left Labour Party and is one of those who have driven the push for a law change.
When the law comes into force, social media companies will have to take "reasonable measures" to prevent young teenagers from having accounts. The companies risk fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars (approximately 355 million Swedish kronor) if they do not follow the rules.
Intensive debate
Although the law was adopted with a large majority in parliament, the debate has been intense and many have expressed concerns.
The concept of excluding part of our population from a form of communication does not feel right. I respect the arguments from my colleagues who think we should do something, and clearly we should do something, but not like this, said, for example, Liberal Senator Richard Colbeck before the vote, reports ABC.
On paper, the new law is one of the strictest in the world. At the same time, there are virtually no clear details on how the ban will be enforced in practice. It is up to the social media giants behind the platforms to find technical solutions.
Everything should be in place within a year.
It requires an infrastructure, otherwise it can become a futile effort if you just set up a requirement without knowing how it will be followed, says Daniel Westman, a lawyer specializing in media law.
He also sees challenges related to a requirement for identification.
If you require identification to use these services, it will have consequences for other users as well. Then you cannot have anonymous accounts, for example, and that can be both good and bad, he says.
"The change is total"
Swedish Josefin Fox has lived in Wollongong, near Sydney, with her children, aged 13 and 16, since 2012.
I've thought a lot about this and what's really behind the proposal. It's going to be so fast to push through the new law, and I wonder why they don't take the time to discuss it properly first, she says to TT.
At the same time, she agrees that children's and young people's use of social media is a huge problem.
As soon as the kids started with social media, the addiction was huge, and they want to sit with their phones all day. The change is total, and it's something many parents experience, she says.
If you ask me if it would be better for children not to be on social media, the answer is yes. But if you ask me if a ban is the right way to go, I'm hesitant. How do you check that it's being followed? I think it's hard to make it work in practice, says Josefin Fox.
"Will find a way"
Many young people are also expected to try to circumvent the rules.
I want to continue using it. It will feel weird not to have it and be able to talk to all my friends at home. I'll find a way. And so will all my other friends, says 12-year-old Angus Lydom to AFP.
Alexandra Weilenmann is a professor of interaction design at the University of Gothenburg. In addition to the practical difficulties associated with a ban and its enforcement, she also sees other problems.
In my opinion, it's not about whether we should have social media or not. It's much more complicated than that, but it doesn't go home politically. You take a hard line and then it's a ban, she says.
Weilenmann emphasizes that social media is both good and bad, and that a ban also affects the positive aspects.
But it's of course much more complicated and costly to target the problematic aspects. It's quite easy for a politician to say they're banning something, she says.
No specific list of platforms covered by the law on 16-year-olds has been made public.
The law's definition of social media is very broad. It describes social media as an electronic service that meets the following conditions:
The sole or primary purpose of the service is to enable social interaction online between two or more end-users
The service allows end-users to link to or interact with some or all other end-users
The service allows end-users to upload material to the service.
Source: ABC
