This is the third and final session on the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 — aka U16’s Social Media Ban – an important piece of legislation being waved through by the Liberal and Labor parties with minimal debate. The Department was called to explain the bill, which of course they defended with responses that would not hold up under closer scrutiny. If only Senators had time to do this.
Several serious revelations emerged during the Department’s testimony, including this little pearl: it’s better for foreign-owned multinational tech platforms to control children’s internet use than for parents to supervise or manage their children’s social media and online interactions. One Nation strongly disagrees.
I also raised concerns about the YouTube exemption, which is worded in such a way that it could apply to any video streaming site, including pornographic sites. The Department’s response was to point to other regulations and codes that “supposedly” protect children from accessing porn. What utter nonsense! Any child in this country without a parental lock can access Pornhub by simply clicking the “Are you over 18?” box. Teachers nationwide report that even primary school students are being exposed to and influenced by pornography. If this bill accomplishes anything good, it should be to prevent children from accessing pornography, which it deliberately avoids doing.
This bill claims to be about many things – keeping children safe is not one of them.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for appearing today. Could you please explain the provisions around exemptions for sites that do not require a person to have an account, meaning they can simply arrive and watch? An example would be children watching cartoons on YouTube. What’s the definition here of a site that can be viewed without an account?
Mr Irwin: I guess it goes to the obligation around holding an account, or having an account, which relates to the creation or the holding of an account. So if there is any process—
Senator ROBERTS: Is it the creator’s responsibility?
Mr Irwin: Sorry?
Senator ROBERTS: Is it the creator’s responsibility? Is the account the creator’s responsibility?
Mr Irwin: No, all responsibility is on the platform. If a platform under this definition has the facility to create an account and/or has under 16s who have an account on there already, then they will have to take reasonable steps.
Senator ROBERTS: What’s the functional difference in your definition between YouTube and Porn Hub?
Mr Chisholm: One contains content that is restricted content that is prohibited to be accessed by children under law. Porn Hub is a pornographic website.
Senator ROBERTS: I understand that.
Mr Chisholm: YouTube has a whole range of information, including educational content and a range of information that doesn’t really match up with a site like Porn Hub.
Mr Irwin: That was the second limb of the age-assurance trial: looking at technologies for 18 or over, looking at pornographic material for age assurance. That also goes to the matter of the codes that DIGI were talking about before. Those codes relate to access to particular types of content including pornographic content.
Senator ROBERTS: Let me try and understand—
Mr Chisholm: The design of Pornhub is to provide pornographic material to people who are permitted to watch it. That’s the difference.
Senator ROBERTS: I guessed that, but I asked for the functional difference. Pornhub is 18-plus, but apparently you don’t have to prove it. Could you show me where in the legislation, in this child protection bill, you’re actually including porn sites?
Mr Chisholm: There are separate laws in relation to pornographic material, which we can step you through. This bill is more about age limits for digital platforms, imposing a 16-year age limit for digital platforms. There are other laws that prohibit access to pornographic material online including the codes process and classification system.
Mr Irwin: That’s correct.
Senator ROBERTS: What’s required for someone aged 16 or 17 to get access to Pornhub?
Mr Irwin: That’s subject to the codes that industry is developing right now, which DIGI talked about, in terms of what specifically is required. There is also a whole system of classification laws that are designed to prevent access to adult content by children. On top of that, there’s the eSafety Commissioner’s administration of things like basic online safety expectations and the phase 2 codes that are under development.
Senator ROBERTS: I’m glad you raised that because I was going to raise it. You exempt gaming sites because they already carry age recommendations. In fact, some video game sites are MA 15+; they’re not 16-plus. What will have to change? Will it be your bill or the MA 15+ rating?
Mr Chisholm: The bill doesn’t require them to change—
Ms Vandenbroek: Nothing will change.
Mr Chisholm: because gaming isn’t caught by the new definition. There’s nothing that requires gaming systems to change.
Senator ROBERTS: So social media is 16-plus, but video games are 15-plus.
Mr Chisholm: The policy here is to treat games as different to social media. For some of the reasons we talked about before, they are seen as a different form of content consumption and engagement to social media.
Senator ROBERTS: Doesn’t this indicate to people that this bill’s intent is not about what the government says?
Mr Chisholm: No, the bill is definitely about what the government says. It imposes a firm age limit of 16 on account creation for social media for all of the concerns and reasons outlined about the damage that’s being done to under-16s through exposure to social media. Games are also subject to classification rules, so they have their own regime they have to comply with now.
Mr Irwin: They’re subject to the broader Online Safety Act as well.
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, I’ll get you to wrap up.
Senator ROBERTS: I have a last question. I understand that there are parental controls that parents can buy—they’re sometimes free—in the form of apps that watch over what children are watching. What alternatives are already available for parents to control children’s social media and control their exposure? Did you evaluate them, and why don’t you just hand the authority back to where it belongs—to parents—because they can do a better job of parenting their child than government can?
Mr Chisholm: The very strong feedback that we received from parents during this consultation is that they do not want to bear the burden or responsibility of making decisions that should be better reflected in the law. At the moment, parents often refer to the 13-year age limit that’s part of the US terms of service—
Mr Irwin: For privacy reasons.
Mr Chisholm: for privacy reasons, that apply in Australia. That’s often used for parents to say to their children, ‘You can’t have a social media account until you’re 13.’ It’s really important for parents to point to a standard law, an age limit, that will apply to everybody. It’s also feedback we’ve received from a lot of children. They would rather have a universal law that applies to all children under the age of 16 instead of a situation where some children have it and some children don’t, and where all of the harms that we’re aware of from exposure to social media continue to magnify. We also don’t want a situation where there is any question the parents have some legal responsibility in relation to an age limit. The very strong view of the government is that that responsibility should be borne by the platforms, not parents.
Senator ROBERTS: We’re not going to have—
Mr Chisholm: The platforms are in a much better position to control their services than parents are.
Senator ROBERTS: So we want to put parenting in the hands of social media platforms?
Mr Chisholm: The parents have said to us that they have a very strong view that they want a 16-year age limit, and that the platforms are better placed to enforce that because it is their platforms.
Senator ROBERTS: How much notice did the parents get to give their comments? Because we got 24 hours notice of the closing of submissions.
Mr Irwin: We’ve been consulting, and I will add we do have evidence that 58 per cent of parents were not aware of social media parental monitoring, and only 36 per cent actually searched for online safety information.
Senator ROBERTS: So wouldn’t it be better to educate the parents?
Mr Chisholm: We are educating parents, too. That’s part of the digital literacy and other measures we are undertaking. Education is important, but it’s not enough.
Senator ROBERTS: I meant educating parents about the controls already available to keep the control over their children in parents’ hands, not usurping it and putting it in the government’s hands.
Mr Chisholm: I think it comes back to the point that we’ve made that the very strong view here is that platforms should bear the responsibility for imposing or following an age limit, not parents, who don’t have as much information about how these platforms operate as the platforms themselves.
