Social media takes centre stage at Canberra hearing on digital platforms

Australian parents have pleaded with the federal government to raise age verification for social media platforms to 18, warning that the digital platforms corrode healthy childhood development and “tech companies now own our children”. The proposal, delivered by the Australian Parents Council and the Heads Up Alliance at the parliament’s joint select committee on social media and Australian society hearing in Canberra on Monday, goes beyond the 14-16 years age bracket the government is considering and would place social media use alongside voting, gambling and alcohol consumption as a strictly adult activity. But Australian Parents Council vice-president Karen Robertson said “swift and meaningful” reform was needed to give children a “life beyond screens”. “We’ve lost the power to parent,” she told the committee. “Tech companies now own our children.” Father Ali Halkic, who lost his son to suicide, backed the 18-years threshold to help parents beat back the “cancer” of social media plaguing Australian children and their mental health. “Help us control this epidemic, this plague,” he said. “I know we can make a difference for the next 10 years.” Siobhan Allen from Catholic School Parents said a verification threshold of 18 would give parents and children “more time” to prepare for and navigate the online world. The committee, led by Newcastle Labor MP Sharon Claydon, is investigating the use of social media age verification for Australian children, tech giant Meta’s decision to withdraw from the News Media Bargaining Code, the role of journalism, news and public interest media to counter misinformation and disinformation on digital platforms, how algorithms and recommender systems influence what Australians see and other issues related to harmful or illegal content disseminated over platforms, including child abuse material. A leading researcher on the effects of social media on children told the committee that communities need online safety education and literacy, which should be funded by tax from tech companies. Oxford University professor Andrew Przybylski is a psychologist who said parents need to be empowered with tools, but they should not have to pay for it. The professor told the committee he was sceptical about online age restrictions because they impede children’s right to access information, and they deserved better. He explained that other countries have tried to restrict children’s online use with a more authoritarian hand but they had failed. “What’s really needed here is kind of effective literacy at a community level, on the parent level, and on the founder level,” Professor Przybylski said. He suggested it would be better to hire more police to act on leads about online child sexual exploitation, make distracted driving as heavily punished as drink driving, and make it illegal for online social media platforms to harvest data on children and sell ads based off that information. Professor Przybylski said those three issues were the largest hazards to young people in the online world. “Being sexually exploited destroys more children’s lives than cancer does,” he said. “The root of this bad behaviour that we observe is social media firms.” Professor Przybylski said tech companies need to be held accountable in order to achieve the best outcomes for children. He said tech companies should be taxed in order to fund research, social services, and social workers to help children with these problems. “And if that means the tax needs to go up, then the tax needs to go up or why have a tax at all?” he asked. Earlier in the hearing, discussion around a viral TikTok suggesting young men should look for a girlfriend they can lift up and threaten with violence took centre stage. The video, drawn from the popular whensexhappens podcast, states men should not date women who are more than “two-thirds” of their body weight. “The woman should feel smaller,” the male podcaster says. “He needs to feel like he could kill her but he is not going to. “If I’m holding the girl and subconsciously she knows if I wanted to, I could pick her up and throw her into the wall, but I’m not, she’s like, ‘OK, I trust him, he can control himself’.” National Women’s Safety Alliance executive director Katherine Berney said the government should consider censorship or penalties for the video as part of larger reform to beat back what she called a “tsunami of misogynistic content” on social media platforms. “The idea of freedom of speech … in Australia obviously, that’s a concept we have,” she said on Monday morning. “The idea you can say whatever you want without consequence is ridiculous. “What is the consequence for that (whensexhappens video) currently? That has 30 million views. “They don’t have the right to have that opinion without consequence.” Ms Berney said a “multi-layered and collaborative approach” would be required to address the challenges posed by social media. “We can’t shame people for their need for community, for their need to feel connected,” she said. “(But we) can provide a better framework, a safer framework.” She said the social media giants should be obliged to prevent damaging content from reaching their platforms and remove content if required. She also recommended the government provide Australians with “social media self-defence” courses to help them navigate the chaos of the online world. The dark components of the social media age have exploded into view across multiple submissions to the committee. International Justice Mission Australia chief executive David Braga, in his opening statement, said platforms like Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger were being used to transmit and livestream sick child sex abuse material, and Australians were “consistently ranked as a high consumer of this abuse”. “Online sexual exploitation of children often takes the form of livestreamed child sexual abuse, whereby offenders pay traffickers to commit sexual abuse of victims, often young children, while offenders watch and direct this abuse live for a fee,” he said. “The abuse routinely includes forcible sexual penetration. Children are forced to engage in sex acts with other children, are sexually abused by an adult, and sometimes harmed in other degrading ways, such as in bestiality. “Simply put, it is child sex abuse, live, on demand”. The nexus with social media comes because arrangements for these sessions are often made by the perpetrator and the facilitator communicating through everyday social media platforms. “Livestreamed abuse sessions are then often conducted on everyday platforms such as Microsoft Skype, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp,” Mr Braga said. “Australia has a moral obligation to address this harm because we are consistently ranked as a high consumer of this abuse.” A final report from the committee is expected in November. Suicide helplines