LONDON — As Britain’s children head back to school, its new prime minister needs to decide exactly how he wants to keep them off social media. Britain isn’t the only country crafting a social media ban for minors. Developments in Australia and France over the break should give Burnham’s ministers and officials plenty to think about.
Australia’s ban is only having a limited effect on how much kids get on to social media, while France’s ban has hit a huge legal hurdle. In June, then-Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced plans to ban social media for under-16s — only to resign a week later and leave his successor Andy Burnham with an in-tray of unanswered questions about a policy that upends the U.K.’s current online safety regime. MPs return to Parliament next week after the summer break, and Burnham’s government will need to decide how the ban — which is supposed to come into effect in spring — will work.
Australia was the first country in the world to introduce a social media ban for kids in December last year. Last month, the Australian government published its first wave of findings on the experiences of more than 4,000 children and families since the ban took effect. The numbers do not show a huge drop in kids accessing social media.
The proportion of under-16s holding at least one social media account fell from 52.4 percent to 42.3 percent at the three-month follow-up. Meanwhile, the proportion who reported using a social media platform (with or without an account) fell even less, from 85.9 percent to 81.5 percent. Australia only requires age-restricted platforms to take “reasonable steps” to prevent under-16s from creating or keeping accounts.
Access via logged-out experiences, for example, is permissible. The rationale is that account-based access — and the data harvesting that comes with it — increases the likelihood of exposure to potentially harmful design features, such as algorithmic suggestions or infinite scroll. But the U.K. could go further than Australia by casting a wider net to cover both account ownership and access.
That could implicate not just the social media platforms, but internet service providers too. The previous Starmer government has already laid the groundwork by handing itself powers, via the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act, to force ISPs to keep kids out. France was eager to pursue its own ban for under-15s, but earlier this month the country’s Constitutional Council blocked President Emmanuel Macron’s proposed social media ban, arguing the legislation would disproportionately violate children’s rights to privacy, freedom of expression, and communication.
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