Despite questions about the effectiveness of Australia’s under 16 social media ban, and the logic behind implementing this into law, more regions are set to follow suit, with Spain being the latest nation to push for new rules that would ban young teens from social media apps.
As reported by Politico, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has announced that social platforms will soon be required to implement effective age verification systems, in order to stop young teens from accessing their apps.
As per Sánchez:
“Today our children are exposed to a space they were never meant to navigate alone… We will protect [minors] from the digital Wild West.”
Spain is set to join other EU nations in implementing teen social media bans, including Denmark, France and Portugal, while the U.K. is also exploring the same.
As noted, this follows Australia’s new laws that ban teens aged under 16 from social media apps, with new penalties now enacted to incentivize more action from the platforms to keep teens out of their apps.
And to some degree, that does seem to be working. Meta says that it’s blocked 544k accounts in Australia which it believes belong to young users, while Snapchat has restricted 415k accounts. Australia’s population is around 28 million, so a million accounts impacted is a significant amount. Yet, at the same, experience on the ground in Australia suggests that most teens have worked out how to circumvent these new restrictions, and are still accessing social apps as they always have. Just not in the same ways.
In order to combat this, some regions are now also considering restrictions on VPN use to stop teens from cheating the system by spoofing their location. Though that then raises questions around digital freedom, and the right to privacy online, and it’ll be interesting to see whether that carries through, and has an impact on broader enforcement.
For their part, the platforms continue to argue that teen restrictions are ineffective, and the supposed impacts of social media use are not backed by evidence, while the current detection and enforcement measures are too variable to create a legally enforceable barrier for entry, making it impossible to keep all teens out all the time.
There are also concerns that teens could be driven to less secure platforms instead, negating the value of any restriction, because one way or another, the internet is going to play a significant role in their interactive process.
On that point, I agree, that these laws are idealistic, and seem to lean on the hope that kids will just go back to riding bikes with their friends if they can’t use social apps. But they won’t.
Connectivity has been a constant in the lives of the next generation, and as such, it’s become a key element in how they interact. That’s especially true for those who lived through the COVID lockdowns, and as such, I don’t see how they’re expected to just switch off and stop using social apps.
Of course, that only relates to the current generation that’s impacted by the change, and future kids will grow up knowing that they’re not supposed to use social apps till they’re 16. But if even some of their friends are on social, that will be enough of a lure to get them to log on as well, and there are no truly effective barriers to keep them out, or away from other, less secure apps.
App store-level restrictions are the best barrier, which would ensure that users under a certain age simply can’t download certain apps. Though that doesn’t account for desktop use, or kids logging into TikTok on their TV set, and again, if they want to know what’s happening, they will find ways to get access.
Or they’ll switch to other apps, sparking a rise in alternatives, or they’ll form their own groups on WhatsApp where they share content.
I’m not sure that there’s anything that can be done to effectively keep teens away, which is why education should be the bigger focus, and ongoing support for efforts to combat the negative elements of online interaction.
But it seems like that’s not the way things are heading.
Expect to see more on this in the coming months.
