Or, "Et Tu, Australia?"
Australia recently passed a sweeping new law setting a binding legal age limit of 16 for at least most social media. It will take full effect in one year from its passage. And aside from their notably illiberal and draconian measures during the Covid pandemic (and the fact that they were of course descended from a penal colony), this kind of thing is quite out of character to say the least for a country that has long prided itself on being relatively free-spirited and is quite famous for the saying and attitude of "no worries, mate".
Mike Males wrote an excellent Substack article from a youth rights perspective, discussing just how wrong and harmful it is for the state to do that to young people. And we at Twenty-One Debunked agree with him. But even if you the reader don't agree with him, and are smug about this law perhaps appeasing the illiberal and ageist social-mediaphobes in charge, consider this: it will NOT stop there. Mark my words, the moment they see that their voodoo didn't really work, they will triple down and expand the restrictions, tighten the age verification requirements, and/or keep increasing the age limit higher and higher. And this will also backfire on adults as well, endangering everyone's civil rights way beyond anonymity, given the privacy and cybersecurity pitfalls inherent to ALL forms of online age verification that would be even modestly effective.
What should be done instead is what we have long advocated, as has the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF): a "Privacy First" approach, that is, comprehensive data privacy legislation for ALL ages, which, at a minimum, bans surveillance advertising as well as "dark patterns" and other similarly deceptive and ethically questionable practices. That will throw the proverbial One Ring into the fire for good. But of course, Big Tech would NOT like that.
Also, simply adding more "friction" would also make such platforms safer and less addictive overall.
So what are we waiting for?
P.S. Australia has never had any equivalent to America's Section 230, so the fact that they saw the need to "get tough" on social media companies implies that they had just as much of a problem as the USA. Thus, outright repeal of Section 230 (as opposed to much more nuanced and narrow reforms in regards to personalization of feeds and algorithms) as some ignorant social-mediaphobes have suggested would solve absolutely nothing, and would do far more harm than good. Don't do it! You have been warned.
UPDATE: Pari Esfandiari also wrote a great essay about how such a ban will do more harm than good.
