Unfair and impractical: Online safety bill to cause more harm than it prevents

[Jahangir655]

The Australian Government’s Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 is a landmark piece of legislation aiming to protect children and teenagers from the harms of social media.

However, its broad measures, lack of clarity on implementation and the disparity in how children are treated compared to other government policies make it unfair and impractical.

For starters, the Bill treats anyone under the age of 16 as equally vulnerable, grouping 15-year-olds with 5-year-olds. A teenager on the cusp of adulthood engages with social media differently from a young child, yet both are subject to identical restrictions.

More alarmingly, this contrasts starkly with Victoria’s recent debate over the minimum age of criminal responsibility. Earlier this year the Victorian Government failed to pass the Youth Justice Bill which sought to raise the minimum age of criminal culpability to 12. As it stands, children as young as 10 can be detained and face criminal charges. While a 10-year-old can be jailed for their actions, a 15-year-old is considered incapable of safely managing a social media account. The inconsistency is glaring.

But it’s not just children who will be put at risk by this bill. It leaves many more people panama mobile phone numbers database vulnerable to online risks.

The honeypot problem of age verification
One of the Bill’s most significant challenges lies in its reliance on age verification systems. While age verification is intended to protect children, it inadvertently creates a major privacy risk for all users, including adults.

To comply, platforms must verify the ages of every user, not just those under 16. This means collecting proof of age data – such as government-issued IDs or other sensitive personal information – from millions of Australians. The consequences are far-reaching.

Platforms would amass vast repositories of Personally Identifiable Information (PII), including names, birthdates, and even images or scans of IDs creating a centralised honeypot of valuable data ripe for
hackers to target.