Albanese to urge leaders to join crackdown on children’s social media access
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The news: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will urge other countries to join Australia as it launches its crackdown on children’s social media access, when he addresses leaders on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York on Wednesday.
The context: Albanese will tout Australia's world-first policy to ban children under the age of 16 from using social media from 10 December this year.
From that date, “Australia will introduce social media age restrictions that go further than any country has before,” Albanese will say. “Not cutting access to publicly available content, but delaying the ability to set up social media accounts from the current age of 13, until the age of 16. This is a sensible but overdue step to protect young Australians at a critical stage of their development, giving them three more years to build real world connections and online resilience.”
“As social media evolves, and as the tug-of-war between real life and endless scrolling grows ever more uneven, the load is not one that should be borne by kids and their parents alone. With this law, we are saying: You don’t have to.”
Albanese will say that stories of young children who have died by suicide after damaging social media use and their parents working to ensure that other young Australians don’t suffer they same fate “is a powerful reminder of why our Government is determined to back them and keep young Australians safe online.”
The Government wants “children to have a childhood. To be off their phones and on the sporting field, or playing music, or hanging out with friends.”
The address is expected to be attended by around five world leaders, the SMH reports, including European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Maltese Prime Minister Robert Abela.
Albanese will also deliver his official address to the General Assembly on his final day in New York before departing for London.
The PM briefly met with President Donald Trump on Tuesday, the first time the leaders have met in person, after confirmation the pair will sit down in Washington next month.
The sources: Anthony Albanese speech transcript, SMH
