I was a young person at the social media summit so you don’t have to be…

Content warning: This article discusses suicide and eating disorders.

Alrighty, here’s the round up. The South Australian and New South Wales Governments held a joint Social Media Summit in both states over the past two days, looking at new South Australian laws regulating the use of social media for those under 14.

The legislation, often called the ‘ban on social media’, intends to regulate social media access for children under 16 years. I won’t dive into it too deeply, however the key point here is that it intends to financially punish technology companies through a regulator body and other legal avenues for underage usage, rather than punish the young people using social media themselves. Kids versions of social media will likely be exempt from the no-use list.

Whilst this was initially proposed as a state bill, Federal Communications Minister Michelle Rowland affirmed the Federal Government’s plans to introduce a similar Commonwealth bill by the end of the year. She also highlighted Federal exemptions from the regulations for certain social media platforms if they, “Demonstrate a low risk of harm to children." Both the Federal and state bills were said to have support from both major political parties.

If you’re a South Australian high school student, then be aware that from next year you will be learning from a government-funded social media education campaign. Topics covered will include cyberbullying, healthy body image, privacy issues such as coercive control, image based abuse, and how to better recognise scams, misinformation and fake news online.

So what counts as social media anyway and which platforms will be exempt?

The short answer is we are not sure. The initial report on the state bill by former Chief Justice Robert French AC defined social media broadly, to the point where the app to control Tesla Cars counted. However, at the Summit, the platforms explicitly mentioned included Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Snapchat.

What will the Federal age limit be?

In South Australia, the proposed legislation emphasised that people under 14 can’t use social media at all, whereas 15- and 16-year-olds can with parental consent.

At the Federal level, Ms Rowland emphasised that she is consulting with Chief Ministers in each state to determine an age limit, which could be as high as 16.

What benefits of regulating social media were discussed at the Summit?

The impacts of social media in regards to bullying and harassment were discussed extensively.

Australia’s chief intelligence spy person, Mike Burgess, emphasised how social media algorithms were creating echo chambers which increased the rate of ‘ideological radicalism’ among children.

Parents demonstrated the harmful impacts of bullying and harassment via social media, discussing how ‘sexting’ scams and doctored image-based abuse led their children to suicide.

A panel of teenagers from The Advertisers’ ‘Teen Parliament’ program shared how they personally had been bullied and harassed on social media to some extent.

And psychologists and teachers alike emphasised how much more students were connecting with each other after phone restrictions were introduced in schools.

What are some of the issues with the proposed regulations?

Some of the issues that were canvased by audience members during the Summit included youth mental health support outside of social media.

According to Reach-out, 73% of young people surveyed reported using social media as a mental health recourse, with 51% using it because they couldn’t access to professional mental health services.

The community building aspect of social media was also raised by audience members, especially for those such as queer, neurodivergent or First Nations peoples for whom it isn’t always safe to meet in person due to things like racism and homophobia from onlookers.

It was also raised by audience members in discussion surrounding eating disorders that the Butterfly Foundation, aka one of the most prominent advocacy organisations on the topic, were against the new restrictions. They emphasised that according to an internal youth survey, 46% of respondents preferred to seek body image information on social media where reputable sources such as the Butterfly Foundation can ‘challenge dominant diet culture and weight stigma narratives.’

These issues, whilst raised by audience members, did not receive as much attention within the Summit, with the new legislation emphasised as being ‘not perfect but good’.

In summary, the Summit was predominantly pro-new social media regulations. However, as demonstrated by audience Q+A segments, it is a complex topic especially in relation to youth mental health.

Anyway that was the Summit. We have lots of different opinions here at Hub but feel free to tell us what you think! Or if you’re passionate about this topic, submit an article. We love having new contributors on board!

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