Age restrictions

Australia's social-media law will be a case study

Australia's social-media law will be a case study

Last week, Australia approved the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill, 2024, to prevent children under 16 from using social media such as Facebook, Instagram, Tik-Tok, and Snapchat. Australian lawmakers were triggered into passing this measure by the recent suicides of two 12-year-olds who had been bullied online. This is the first such legislation in a liberal democracy, though many platforms voluntarily prevent children under 13 from accessing their platforms and ask for parental permission before signing up underage users. The Bill imposes fines of $32 million if a platform fails to prevent access by under-16 users and it gives the platforms a year to set up age-verification measures. This is tricky, and may turn out to be a Catch-22 since age-verification involves the use of the sensitive personal data of minors, which may in itself result in a breach of existing privacy laws.