eSafety urges government to include YouTube in children's social media ban
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The news: eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has urged Communications minister Annika Wells to remove an exemption for YouTube in draft rules for the forthcoming social media ban for under-16s before it commences in December.
The context: Inman Grant said in a letter to the minister sent last Thursday that children are “experiencing the types of harms” that the social media age restriction aims to mitigate on YouTube.
She also said the rules should avoid naming specific platforms “given the rapidly evolving nature of technology and the continuously shifting risk profile of online services”.
The social media age restriction will come into effect in December, with companies to be fined up to $50 million if they do not take reasonable steps to prevent children under 16 years of age from repeatedly accessing their social media platforms.
When the social media age restriction passed parliament last November, draft rules were set to exempt digital services that the government claimed were “primarily for the purposes of education and health support”, including YouTube.
Wells sought Inman Grant's advice on the exemptions on 12 June and intends to finalise the rules by mid-year. Earlier this year, the federal government sought feedback on the exemptions through a private consultation process.
Inman Grant called for greater clarity in the explanatory statement to the Rules by confirming what “the harms and design features the Act seeks to address, and how eSafety should apply the different purpose tests in the draft Rules, in particular what constitutes ‘primary’ and ‘significant’”.
The letter also urges the minister to amend the rules to reflect the risk of harm that services pose and not just their purpose as well as to consider “introducing a new Rule to exclude lower-risk services that are appropriate for young children”.
Otherwise, Inman Grant said the regulator would “likely exercise discretion not to enforce compliance” with the social media minimum age for these lower-risk services in the “absence of identified harm”.
She also made a prospective recommendation “that implementation is monitored to identify any emerging challenges that should be addressed through further rules”, such as the migration of children and harms to services which have regulatory carve-outs.
