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, given the privacy and cybersecurity pitfalls inherent to ALL forms of 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.
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, repealing Section 230 as some ignorant social-mediaphobes have suggested would solve nothing and do more harm than good. Don't do it!
The concept of minimum ages is overused and overrated. Proponents like to say that the brain doesn't finish developing until 25. However, justifying redundant minimum ages for their own good is wrong headed. They shouldn't live in a vacuum. People make mistakes and that includes young people. People can learn from mistakes and that includes young people as well. I do agree with the Privacy First proposal because it's actually a good policy for once.
ReplyDeleteAmen! Thank you, very well-said.
DeleteAnd it seems that age limits beget even more age limits, by delaying the "learning by doing" process, infantilizing youth, and thus kicking the proverbial can down the road for what age groups are the "serial beginners" and thus high-risk. We need to break the cycle by either lowering, abolishing, or at least NOT further raising such age limits.
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