Anthony Albanese hopes the teen social media ban will spark a cultural change for Australians but one expert believes it could take a generation for this to occur.
Australia has become the first nation to introduce age restrictions for social media, with 10 platforms including YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram required to block anyone under 16 from holding an account.
The prime minister said Australia could now “take back control” from social media companies and the reform would make an enormous difference to young people’s lives.
Rachael Sharman, senior lecturer in psychology at the University of the Sunshine Coast, is “hugely in favour” of the ban, but said its success would be difficult to measure.
“We know that taking teens off screens and putting them in a camp shows improvements in their social ability and emotional recognition skills within a matter of a week,” Dr Sharman said.
“But let’s be honest, parents aren’t going to race their kids off to a nature camp. It’s going to be a process.”
Dr Sharman said she expected under-16s would become less hooked on social media within three years, but it could take a generation for a cultural shift to occur.
“Kids who are nature babies will start to outnumber the kids hanging on for dear life to their apps, but it won’t happen overnight,” she said.
“I’m old enough to remember the smoking bans and that probably took 10 to 20 years to change attitudes. It was a lot longer than what people had hoped.
“I would suggest this will take a generation or two.”
RMIT University information sciences professor Lisa Given has heard from teens who circumvented age assurance checks, including a 13-year-old who was detected as being 34.
“If success looks like getting us talking about these issues and identifying a problem, I think that’s been successful,” Professor Given said.
“I think if parents are looking for this as a silver bullet to help them deal with the harm their kids are facing, this isn’t really the solution they were hoping it would be.”
One teenager told AAP he had been kicked off platforms owned by Meta, but still had access to Snapchat.
But 13-year-old Ballarat girl Pippa Martin’s attempts at putting on extra make-up to look older failed to circumvent Snapchat’s facial verification.
“I got some make-up and put it around my winkle lines trying to make myself look really old,” she told AAP.
Despite teens finding workarounds, Mr Albanese has already hailed the ban a success as parents and children are discussing the impacts of social media.
Platforms must take “reasonable steps” to block the age group from accessing their accounts and from making new ones or they face fines of up to $49.5 million.
Companies have said they will use a range of methods to verify a user’s age, including face scans with artificial intelligence, sophisticated analysis of people’s posting patterns, and digital IDs.
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