From a critical youth work standpoint, the ban risks eroding youth rights, undermining professional practice, and diverting political attention away from more systemic reforms. A rights-based, participatory approach offers a more sustainable and equitable path to enhancing young people’s safety and wellbeing in digital environments. By enforcing a blanket restriction, the policy infantilises and homogenises young people, setting a precedent for future exclusionary policies, such as raising the legal age to vote or obtain a driver’s licence. It is also likely to generate new challenges, such as the rise of less regulated or legally circumventive social media platforms.
These dilemmas are not unique to Australia. In the UK, the Online Safety Act (2023) reflects similar anxieties but pursues a different approach, placing greater responsibility on platforms rather than banning young people outright. Both cases highlight a global struggle to balance protection with participation, safety with rights. These developments raise broader questions: Have we learned nothing from past attempts at prohibition and ‘protective’ policies? Will other countries follow this world-first political measure? Should they? Panic logic would say yes; critical youth work argues otherwise.
Decent article. Governments, neglecting regulation of platform design and provision of digital literacy programs, uphold conditions in which problems can only be exacerbated: legitimizing studies, often financed by interest groups, providing unnuanced headline statistics, which increase the likelihood of citation by sensationalist mass media; ultimately manufacturing consensus on increased government control, among the largely digitally illiterate public.
Given that platforms, like Facebook and YouTube, have been experimenting with both identity and age verification, well before being obligated to, suggests a self-serving interest in, or at least anticipation for these technically challenging regulations. Like the article, I fear minors to migrate to alt-tech platforms instead; leading governments to indiscriminatory mandate the same for these, for which they do not have the resources to comply: killing big-tech’s (future) competitors.
I’m of the opinion that in an alarmingly digitized society, intensified during the COVID pandemic, minors should also be able to participate in it. And if we’ve established, minors can no longer responsibly coexist alongside adults on the internet, perhaps we should create a (hardware) platform specifically for minors. Have children identify themselves to prove they’re young enough to enter, rather than having to prove the contrary: requiring EVERY internet user, to supply additional personally identifiable information.
Although there’s unmistakably reason for concern, I’d argue if we continue this trend long enough, we’ll end up with an effective safety-tyranny.