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Grow up addicts. You can communicate with tons of other apps.
What I find fascinating about this whole thing is the almost universal simping that has occurred in defence of these large websites like Facebook, Twitter (X), Reddit etc. I find it amusing that people who would decry using these large websites suddenly need to defend them.
It's pretty depressing to see how many people have been ignoring the genuine harm that can occur using social media. During recent filings in the US, Meta hid and defunded research that showed a causal relationship with mental health and social media usage in under 13's along a myriad of other issues identified.
These new restrictions aren't perfect and really should be reviewed in the future, however something does need to happen and asking the industry to self regulate has resulted in no meaningful changes occurring.
It’s pretty depressing to see how many people have been ignoring the genuine harm that can occur using social media.
I feel like most people agree that it can be harmful. The problem is more that they don't understand enough about how social media works to realise that it's a structural design problem with the technology itself and one that can only start to be addressed through government regulation. To a lot of people it becomes solely a personal responsibility problem. If a child has an addiction it's solely the parent's fault for allowing their child to become addicted. If an adult has an addiction then it's solely their own fault for letting themselves get addicted. When it gets framed as an individual problem rather than a structural one, it's easy to oppose any and all legislation on the basis of "well none of us have a problem so why do we have to pay for a solution/be punished?". It's difficult to understand how easily psychological manipulation can occur if you don't understand the techniques being used.
Another, related, problem in this particular case is that a lot of people still seem to think the main problems are the more sensational things like child predators or violent content. Whilst those are very real and serious concerns, they are pretty extreme examples and getting fixated on them makes it very easy to ignore the more insidious effects of social media usage on developing brains. I guess that's one of my main problems with the current implementation; it’s based around account ownership and some platforms like YouTube still use an algorithm and build a shadow profile with recommendations based on what you've viewed even if you're logged out. For some of these platforms, the current legislation is going to do little to combat addiction (beyond signalling to parents that this stuff is bad, which is definitely important).
I don't know about you, but in every circle I'm in the concern is just the abysmal implementation that not only doesn't address the actual problems but kind of makes them worse, and it'd be really easy to write a better policy that properly addresses that without any ID being involved.
It's pretty depressing to see how many people in favour of this are prepared to make everyone suffer invasive demands for personal information in order to use a good portion of the internet. These laws haven't even come into force yet and they've already caused harm in the form of tens of thousands of leaked IDs, to say nothing of the problems with further reducing anonymity of discussion in an increasingly authoritarian world.
Whats the story behind the leaked IDs?
Discord implemented age verification due to us and the UK moving towards such laws, a third party involved in this was breached and ~70k users had information leaked (though presumably not all of these included IDs). Approx 68k of these users turned out to be Australian.
WE. WANT. OUR. CRACK ROCK BACK!
Good on em, parents should be regulating internet access and not the govt
Social media is not the internet.
Social media is a privatized mass-spying and manipulation tool that directly and intentionally destroys the mental health of its users.
Are you aware of Labor's 2009 plan to censor the entire Australian internet? It didn't succeed back then thankfully.
There is no way that they will stop at just the big social media platforms.
This is about control and further removal of being anonymous.
It's not even a liberal vs labor thing. They both have a history of bipartisan support for this type of bullshit. See: metadata retention, assistance and access, identify and disrupt laws.
In late December you'll need photo ID to search google so it kinda is about the internet
Please don't spread misinformation.
Under 16's can still access websites like YouTube and Google but will not be able to interact (i.e liking videos) and comment on content. They will still be able to view videos and publicly shared content.
On the 27th of December a separate set of restrictions kick in
https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2025/australians-to-face-age-checks-from-search-engines.html
And yet in your own article it can be quoted:
"Search engines will not be required to implement age assurance measures for users who are not logged in to their services, according to the new rules."
So I fail to see how you will be unable to use Google.
You will eventually want to access a page or service and will be asked to upload an id and or scan your face to make sure it matches. I for one do not want to have to submit my private information in order to use the internet.
Yes but parents aren't doing that so..........
That's their parenting right
Should they?
Does that include single parents? Overworked parents? Parents who don’t understand/use the internet? Do you believe that all children follow their parents’ rules when they step out of the door of their houses?
Make an actual argument for young children having social media access.
Govt could extremely easily release a product for parents, with or without NBN involvement, that helps control internet for kids. They don't and instead impact everyone with this bullshit
Those are not acceptable reasons for poor parenting. Don't move the goal posts.
You didn’t answer any of my questions.
The very children who are at risk are the ones with the type of families I listed, and other at risk types. If you leave it up to the parents, you’re essentially giving up on kids with “bad” parents.
I’ll ask a different way: if you’re a child and you have parents who don’t understand the issue, or are too busy and/or stressed out to monitor the issue, or if you have friends who provide you with access…do you deserve to be out at risk/fall through the cracks?
If you actually want to solve problems…you work together as a society…you raise children as a village. If you want all the problems associated with social media use and other issues you “leave it to the parents”, which is basically giving up.
They won't.
They shouldn't need to.
They will still need to under the current form of the social media ban.
But the paremts aren't doing shit, it's why the Governments stepping in.
Right... It's time to admit people and our governments are both fucked.
People have always been fucked, we don't need a bloody police state just because some people let their kids use the internet
Would be more logical to just ban smart phones from teenagers. They can use dumb phones thus not violating their right to communicate.
I mean, i actually can't see why this isn't a more serious option.
It’s a blunt tool, sure…because it’s not intended to target people with the resources and wherewithal to organize a lawsuit against the government.
Problem is that the vast vast vast majority of kids under 16 see literally no upside from social media.
Have to fo old school.with SMS
Or any one of a zillion other ways like.signal or whatsapp or Telegram or whatever.
It will be a game of whack-a-mole.
They'll just keep adding to their list of apps requiring ID.
And those apps you list are next
Then they start banning protocols
There's absolutely no way this goes anywhere considering they can't even vote for another 3 years.
Yes. Explain to KP Oli how messing with Gen Z's Internet has no bearing on politics, since they're not voting for years.
The ban doesn't really affect Gen Z, they are a lot older than you think. It's only the tail end of that generation who will have to wait a few years.
And Gen Alpha is pretty cooked. They're gonna forget entirely about the ban in a week, if they even notice (because the ban only applies to accounts and not many even use social media logged in).
Yeah it's not gonna do much for the iPad kids being raised by YouTube, unfortunately.