Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

This describes the exact purpose of the law: to stop letting kids use those sites.

My very strict uncle was adamant that my cousins stay off Facebook when they were kids. They got on anyway. When he eventually found out, it was a bad situation. If he couldn't stop his kids from getting on, only the websites themselves can.

> I have tried to find good scientific evidence that shows that social media is a net negative for kids and or adults. I have been unable to do so.

The author mentioned by GP is currently working on a similar questions collecting, reviewing and categorizing known literature in these open access documents [1][2]. I suggest you take a look if you are interested in the topic.

> For example, Hacker News is the only social media that I use, and I feel that I use it very differently than folks that use Instagram, for example. Can they be effectively conflated?

Well, I would say no. But to have a meaningful discussion we need to first agree on what is meant here with "social media". Clearly, this law has been passed with the intent to affect Meta / ByteDance / Reddit and similar companies with a business model that hinges on capturing as much attention of their users as possible, which is very different from HackerNews. Most accusations to social media begin bad are towards of the former type.

> but I would be very curious to see a scientific justification for banning it for kids under 16.

From [1], it seems to me that there is a non-negligible amount of literature that has been accumulating, that could be used to justify the ban. Though, Australia is not a technocracy (I hope), so I would say that there is also a certain degree of "purely social" reasons why they might want to curb the access of social media companies to their youth.

[1]: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w-HOfseF2wF9YIpXwUUtP65-...

[2] : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vVAtMCQnz8WVxtSNQev_e1cG...

'"Messaging apps," "online gaming services" and "services with the primary purpose of supporting the health and education of end-users" will not fall under the ban, as well as sites like YouTube that do not require users to log in to access the platform.'

So they tell us which social media is excluded, but not the definition of "social media" for what is included? Does anyone know how "social media" is being defined in this law?

'Under the laws, which won't come into force for another 12 months, social media companies could be fined up to $50 million for failing to take "reasonable steps" to keep under 16s off their platforms.'

So how is "reasonable steps" defined? The article claims 'Social media companies also won't be able to force users to provide government identification, including the Digital ID, to assess their age.' So is a checkbox that asks "are you over 16?" 'reasonable'?

Predictably, I see a lot of concern being expressed here about how this will be implemented and enforced. There is an underlying assumption, which seems fairly reasonable, that the government is going to use this opportunity (à la Louisiana) to overreach and require people to provide their identity to access these services.

One question I have for other HN commenters though, does it necessarily need to happen this way? Political realities aside, is there a way for the government to set up an age verification service in a way that preserves privacy?

If so, the time is ripe for this community to put forward such a solution and advocate for it loudly. If current sentiment is any indication, social media age restrictions are going to go global and Australia is going to set the precedent for the rest of the world.