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Australia Moves to Ban Children Under 16 from Social Media

Australia's government says unchecked social media algorithms are serving up disturbing content to highly impressionable children and teenagers. JOEL SAGET / AFP/File
Australia's government says unchecked social media algorithms are serving up disturbing content to highly impressionable children and teenagers. JOEL SAGET / AFP/File
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Australia Moves to Ban Children Under 16 from Social Media

Australia's government says unchecked social media algorithms are serving up disturbing content to highly impressionable children and teenagers. JOEL SAGET / AFP/File
Australia's government says unchecked social media algorithms are serving up disturbing content to highly impressionable children and teenagers. JOEL SAGET / AFP/File

Australia's prime minister on Thursday vowed to ban children under 16 from social media, saying the pervasive influence of platforms like Facebook and TikTok was "doing real harm to our kids".
The tech giants would be held responsible for enforcing the age limit and face hefty fines if regulators notice young users slipping through the cracks, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.
Australia is among the vanguard of nations trying to clean up social media, and the proposed age limit would be among the world's strictest measures aimed at children, AFP said.
"This one is for the mums and dads. Social media is doing real harm to kids and I'm calling time on it," Albanese told reporters outside parliament.
The new laws would be presented to state and territory leaders this week, before being introduced to parliament in late November.
Once passed, the tech platforms would be given a one-year grace period to figure out how to implement and enforce the ban.
"The onus will be on social media platforms to demonstrate they are taking reasonable steps to prevent access," Albanese said, explaining what he dubbed a "world-leading" reform.
"The onus won't be on parents or young people."
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said it would "respect any age limitations the government wants to introduce".
But Antigone Davis, Meta's head of safety, said Australia should think carefully about how these restrictions were implemented.
She said poorly drafted laws "risk making ourselves feel better, like we have taken action, but teens and parents will not find themselves in a better place".
Snapchat pointed to a statement from industry body DIGI, which warned that a ban could stop teenagers from accessing "mental health support".
"Swimming has risks, but we don't ban young people from the beach, we teach them to swim between the flags," a DIGI spokeswoman said.
TikTok said it had nothing to add at this stage.
'Falling short'
Once celebrated as a means of staying connected and informed, social media platforms have been tarnished by cyberbullying, the spread of illegal content, and election-meddling claims.
"I get things popping up on my system that I don't want to see. Let alone a vulnerable 14-year-old," Albanese said.
"Young women see images of particular body shapes that have a real impact."
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said social media companies were repeatedly "falling short" in their obligations.
"Social media companies have been put on notice. They need to ensure their practices are made safer," she told reporters at a press briefing alongside Albanese.
Rowland said companies like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Elon Musk's X would face financial penalties if they flouted the laws.
While Rowland did not detail how big these would be, she suggested fines of US$600,000 (Aus $1 million) were well below the mark for companies boasting yearly revenues in the tens of billions of dollars.
Analysts have expressed doubt it would be technically feasible to enforce a strict age ban.
"We already know that present age verification methods are unreliable, too easy to circumvent, or risk user privacy," University of Melbourne researcher Toby Murray said earlier this year.
A series of exemptions would be hashed out for platforms such as YouTube that teenagers may need to use for school work or other reasons.
Australia has in recent years ramped up efforts to regulate the tech giants, with mixed success.
A "combating misinformation" bill was introduced earlier this year, outlining sweeping powers to fine tech companies for breaching online safety obligations.
It has also moved to outlaw the sharing of so-called "deepfake" pornography without consent.
But attempts to regulate content on Musk's X -- previously known as Twitter -- have become bogged down in a long-running courtroom battle.
The tech mogul likened the Australian government to "fascists" earlier this year after they announced they would crack down on fake news.
Several other countries have been tightening children's access to social media platforms.
Spain passed a law in June banning social media access to under-16s.
But in both cases the age verification method has yet to be determined.
France passed laws in 2023 that require social media platforms to verify users' ages -- and obtain parental consent if they are younger than 15.
China has restricted access for minors since 2021, with under-14s not allowed to spend more than 40 minutes a day on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
Online gaming time for children is also limited in China.

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Varieties

Scientists Gather to Decode Puzzle of the World’s Rarest Whale in ‘Extraordinary’ New Zealand Study

A handout photo taken on July 5, 2024 and received on July 16 from the New Zealand Department of Conservation shows rangers Jim Fyfe (L) and Tumai Cassidy walking beside what appears to be the carcass of a rare spade-toothed whale after it was discovered washed ashore on a beach near Taieri Mouth in New Zealand's southern Otago province. (Handout / New Zealand Department of Conservation / AFP)
A handout photo taken on July 5, 2024 and received on July 16 from the New Zealand Department of Conservation shows rangers Jim Fyfe (L) and Tumai Cassidy walking beside what appears to be the carcass of a rare spade-toothed whale after it was discovered washed ashore on a beach near Taieri Mouth in New Zealand's southern Otago province. (Handout / New Zealand Department of Conservation / AFP)
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Scientists Gather to Decode Puzzle of the World’s Rarest Whale in ‘Extraordinary’ New Zealand Study

A handout photo taken on July 5, 2024 and received on July 16 from the New Zealand Department of Conservation shows rangers Jim Fyfe (L) and Tumai Cassidy walking beside what appears to be the carcass of a rare spade-toothed whale after it was discovered washed ashore on a beach near Taieri Mouth in New Zealand's southern Otago province. (Handout / New Zealand Department of Conservation / AFP)
A handout photo taken on July 5, 2024 and received on July 16 from the New Zealand Department of Conservation shows rangers Jim Fyfe (L) and Tumai Cassidy walking beside what appears to be the carcass of a rare spade-toothed whale after it was discovered washed ashore on a beach near Taieri Mouth in New Zealand's southern Otago province. (Handout / New Zealand Department of Conservation / AFP)

It is the world’s rarest whale, with only seven of its kind ever spotted. Almost nothing is known about the enigmatic species. But on Monday a small group of scientists and cultural experts in New Zealand clustered around a near-perfectly preserved spade-toothed whale hoping to decode decades of mystery.

“I can’t tell you how extraordinary it is,” said a joyful Anton van Helden, senior marine science adviser for New Zealand’s conservation agency, who gave the spade-toothed whale its name to distinguish it from other beaked species. “For me personally, it’s unbelievable.”

Van Helden has studied beaked whales for 35 years, but Monday was the first time he has participated in a dissection of the spade-toothed variety. In fact, the careful study of the creature -- which washed up dead on a New Zealand beach in July — is the first ever to take place.

None has ever been seen alive at sea.

The list of what scientists don’t know about spade-toothed whales is longer than what they do know. They don’t know where in the ocean the whales live, why they’ve never been spotted in the wild, or what their brains look like. All beaked whales have different stomach systems and researchers don’t know how the spade-toothed kind processes its food. They don’t know how this one died.

Over the next week, researchers studying the 5-meter (16-foot) -long male at an agricultural research center near the city of Dunedin hope to find out.

“There may be parasites completely new to science that just live in this whale,” said van Helden, who thrilled at the chance of learning how the species produces sound and what it eats. “Who knows what we’ll discover?”

Only six other spade-toothed whales have ever been found, but all those discovered intact were buried before DNA testing could verify their identification.

New Zealand is a whale-stranding hotspot, with more than 5,000 episodes recorded since 1840, according to the Department of Conservation. The first spade-toothed whale bones were found in 1872 on New Zealand’s Pitt Island. Another discovery was made at an offshore island in the 1950s, and the bones of a third were found on Chile’s Robinson Crusoe Island in 1986.

DNA sequencing in 2002 proved that all three specimens were of the same species — and that it was distinct from other beaked whales. But researchers studying the mammal couldn’t confirm whether the species was extinct until 2010, when two whole spade-toothed whales, both dead, washed up on a New Zealand beach. But none has been studied before.

On Monday, the seventh of its kind, surrounded by white-aproned scientists who were measuring and photographing, appeared relatively unblemished, giving no clue about its death. Researchers pointed out marks from cookiecutter sharks — normal, they said, and not the cause.

The dissection will be quiet, methodical and slower than usual, because it is being undertaken in partnership with Māori, New Zealand's Indigenous people. To Māori, whales are a taonga -– a precious treasure -– and the creature will be treated with the reverence afforded to an ancestor.

Members of the local iwi, or tribe, will be present throughout the dissection and consulted at each turn, allowing them to share traditional knowledge and observe customs, such as saying a karakia -– a prayer -– over the creature before the study begins.

“According to our beliefs and our traditions, this whale is a gift of Tangaroa, deity of the ocean,” said Tumai Cassidy from the local people Te Rūnanga Ōtākou. “It’s very important for us to respect that gift and to honor the whale.”

The iwi will keep the jawbone and teeth of the whale at the end of the dissection, before its skeleton is displayed in a museum. 3D printing will be used to replicate those parts, using a CT scan taken of the whale’s head this week.

“It all builds a richer picture for that species but also tells us how it interacts with our oceans,” Cassidy said.

It’s thought that spade-toothed whales live in the vast Southern Pacific Ocean, home to some of the world’s deepest ocean trenches. Beaked whales are the ocean's deepest divers for food, and the spade-toothed may rarely surface, adding to its mystery.

The assembled scientists on Monday included a few who had traveled from abroad to see the whale, which was put in refrigerated storage after its discovery.

“What we are interested in is not only how these animals died, but how they lived,” said Joy Reidenberg, a comparative anatomist from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. “In discovering how they live, we are hoping to find discoveries that we can apply back to the human condition.”