Australia to ban social media for children under age 16, Prime Minister says

CANBERRA, Australia — Children in Australia under the age of 16 will be banned from social media as part of a push to protect young people’s mental health, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said, with firms involved required to enforce the new regulations or face potential fines.

“Social media is doing harm to our kids and I’m calling time on it,” Albanese told reporters in Canberra on Thursday, pledging to introduce legislation later this month. “The onus will be on social media platforms to demonstrate they are taking reasonable steps to prevent access. The onus won’t be on parents or young people. There’ll be no penalties for users.”

The long-anticipated age limits for social media are part of a suite of measures from Albanese’s center-left Labor government to crack down on technology giants, which the prime minister blames for a surge in misinformation and mental health problems.

Australia has a history of taking on large technology companies that run social media sites, including a push in 2021 to make Facebook and Google pay for news content. More recently, the government took Elon Musk’s X Corp. to court over a failure to remove a video of a terrorist attack in Sydney.

Labor is also weighing new legislation to force social media sites to crack down on misinformation and disinformation on their platforms.

The government said it had consulted with social media companies on the age limits “through a variety of means.” However, officials did not specify which websites the changes would apply to, whether they had received assurances that a ban could be put into effect or what the potential size of the penalties for companies could be.

Albanese said he didn’t believe the laws would be fully effective, or fix the problem immediately, pointing to alcohol restrictions that have failed to prevent underage drinking.