Facebook’s global affairs director has called a proposed ban on social media use for Australian teenagers a “whack-a-mole nightmare” for parents that would fail to stop their children from using the app.
Premier Anthony Albanese has proposed legislating a minimum age for social media use in a bid to restrict teenagers from using platforms such as Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram for their safety.
The proposed ban could affect children as young as 14.
But Nick Clegg, Facebook’s head of global affairs, has accused the Prime Minister’s plan of lacking outlines or detail.
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, would still comply with any law passed, but Clegg said the ban would be meaningless unless it was imposed at “choke points” such as in the Play or App stores or in the operating systems used by companies such as Google and Apple.
Speaking at London’s Chatham House think tank, Clegg said there were “a multitude of apps” used by teenagers and content was simply moved from one app to another.
“If you ask every company to play whack-a-mole with these things, it’s going to be a nightmare for parents… because they have to do it on every single app,” said the former leader of the Liberal Democrats in the United Kingdom.
‘If from a parent’s perspective, or even from a government perspective, you really want to have control over who uses social apps or not, the only way you can practically do that is through… where you actually download the apps from the app store.
Anthony Albanese’s decision to ban children from using social media has prompted a response from US giant Facebook
Nick Clegg, Facebook’s head of global affairs, says the plan would be a nightmare for parents, who would have to implement the ban for every app their child uses.
‘As the debate is going on in Australia and elsewhere, if you’re going to make a decision as big as that and say it’s done at this point, you have to make it doable.
“It has to cover all the apps that young people use, not just some of them.”
Mr Albanese has previously said he wants a “national” approach on the issue to ensure different states do not implement their own variations of social media bans.
“One of the things that the age verification trial will do is analyse, through real-life experience, and we’ve been working hard, as if it were in the final stages now to then go out and conduct this trial,” he told NOVA FM earlier this week.
The Prime Minister has raised the idea of implementing facial recognition technology to prevent children from accessing certain apps, including pornography.