An expert on children’s rights from the University of Reading says Australia’s teen social media ban misplaces blame on young people instead of the tech companies responsible for the harms.
Dr Naomi Lott, from the University of Reading School of Law and an expert on children’s rights said: “I understand why Australia has made this decision – we know social media platforms can cause real harm to children. However, the problem lies with tech companies and inadequate regulation of platform design, content moderation, and algorithms, not with the children themselves. This ban places the cost of poor governance on young people.
“From a children’s rights perspective, this is highly complex. Social media enables children to communicate, engage democratically, access information, and express themselves. Banning them impacts their rights to freedom of expression and participation. But we also need to protect them from significant harm.
“What we really need is for tech companies to be held accountable and legislation that restricts harmful content and algorithm design. As the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child calls for, it is the responsibility of states not to ban children from social media platforms, but to restrict companies’ design of these spaces and what is promoted to children.
“The issue here is whether the cost outweighs the benefits. And there are still so many risks. If social media companies know their users are children, we can place expectations on what information they are seeing and how content should be moderated, based on the idea that these users are children. If children are creating fake profiles, social media companies can use this to shield themselves. It is hard to see how this strikes that balance right.”
