Australia’s world-leading under-16s social media ban will not be perfect, but will support parents in getting their children off the internet, Education Minister Jason Clare said, as he unveiled the anti-bullying rapid review which aims to recommend “a consistent national standard for responding to bullying and its underlying causes in schools”.
“There’s always going to be young people that try and get around [bans]. There’s young people that can get access to alcohol at the moment … but we’ve still got laws that say you can’t sell alcohol to people under the age of 18. So I think we’ve got to accept here, I don’t expect this is going to be perfect, but I do expect that it’s going to make a difference, that it’s going to help,” Clare told Seven’s Sunrise this morning.
“All the pressure is on mums and dads at the moment to get young people off social media. The pressure should be on the companies. And so that’s what this is about. “
Now the government was putting the onus on the companies. “[We’re] saying you’ve got the technology, you know what works. Help us to help our kids.”
Under the social media ban set to come into effect on December 10, children under the age of 16 will be banned from holding accounts on some platforms, including TikTok, X, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
However, the proposal has received criticism from youth advocates and social media platforms that argue it will make the online sphere more dangerous for young people, and that children can easily flout the rules or move to sites not covered by the ban.
Speaking on the anti-bullying review, Clare said the issue was “getting worse, not better” in the social media age. “It’s not what it was when we were kids, and a big part of it is the internet because now bullying can follow you home after school, and you can cop it day or night,” Clare said.
“It’s not just a comment to you or a couple of others in the playground, the whole world can see it, which explains why, in the most heartbreaking examples, you’ve seen people take their own life,” he said.
About half of young people have experienced cyberbullying, and 13 per cent have been told, via the internet, to take their own lives, according to statistics quoted by the minister.
