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Spain and Greece are the latest countries to say they may follow Australia's lead and introduce social media bans for children. From Melbourne, Kristina Kukolja asks, almost two months in, are Australia's age restrictions working?
KRISTINA KUKOLJA: The list is growing with Britain, Ireland, France, Malaysia and some Indian states among those considering age limits on children's access to social media. At the World Government summit in Dubai this week, Spain's prime Minister Pedro Sanchez pledged his government would introduce laws to protect children online.
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PRIME MINISTER PEDRO SANCHEZ: Space of addiction, abuse, pornography, manipulation, violence - we will no longer accept that.
KUKOLJA: Australia sees its social media ban for children under 16 as a success. Communications Minister Anika Wells told the National Parliament...
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ANIKA WELLS: Four-point-seven million accounts in the first week - and every social media account that we deactivate is an extra opportunity for young Australians to make a connection in real life.
KUKOLJA: But those numbers don't reveal much, warns Timothy Koskie, a research associate with the Center for AI Trust and Governance at the University of Sydney. He says the government hasn't shown who the suspended accounts belong to, whether they include adults or accounts that have been dormant and on which platforms. Koskie says it's too soon to know if the ban is reducing online harm or changing children's offline habits.
TIMOTHY KOSKIE: We don't have that data. That data takes a really long time to collect.
KUKOLJA: Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, two of the affected platforms, says it has removed around half a million accounts. It's one of the companies that warned against the blanket ban and says it has failed to improve young people's safety and well-being. Timothy Koskie says it could take years for a clearer picture to emerge.
KOSKIE: A lot of the problems that it's ostensibly trying to tackle are ones that developed over a pretty good amount of time. And so we can't expect the responses to be immediate, either.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: G'day, Australia. Our world-first social media ban for under-16s is now in effect. We know this will cause an awkward conversation with your 12-year-old. But if you ask nicely, they'll show you how to work around it.
KUKOLJA: This satirical video made to sound like an Australian government advertisement highlights some of the loopholes used by children to bypass the ban, like the digital age checks.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: You have to turn your face, like, to the right, to the left, up, down, basically, just give, like, a whole video of, like, your profile.
KUKOLJA: This 15-year-old from Melbourne used facial recognition to recover her suspended Instagram account. Her mother gave consent for us to speak to her as long as we did not name her on air.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: There's lots and lots of kids, especially around my age, that use Face ID, and it just passes you as a 16-year-old because you look old enough.
KUKOLJA: She says other friends didn't have their accounts suspended.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: Because their age on social media, before the ban even happened - they had it older than they already were. So they could have put their age as, like, 18 when they were, like, 14.
KUKOLJA: Teens who do break the ban, though, aren't at risk of being fined. It's the social media companies who face penalties of up to 32 million U.S. dollars. The Australian government says the measures are not perfect, but early signs are encouraging. In a recent BBC interview, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant warned she's seen some irregularities and would notify affected companies. Meanwhile, the Australian government is preparing to face two legal challenges against the social media ban in the country's highest court.
For NPR News, I'm Kristina Kukolja in Melbourne, Australia.
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