Google reignites campaign against under-16s social media ban
Sarah Hansen-Young wants to subpoena Tiktok, Meta and Snapchat to appear before the Senate
Google has mounted a final push against Australia’s proposed social media ban for under-16s, just six weeks ahead of its implementation on 10 December.
Appearing remotely at Senate Estimates in Canberra today, Youtube’s Rachel Lord reiterated the tech giant’s stance that the legislation will be “extremely difficult to enforce” and “does not fulfil its promise of making kids safer online”. Youtube is owned by Google, and until July was hopeful of being exempted from the under-16s ban.
While Google, Youtube and Microsoft appeared, Meta, Snapchat and Tiktok ignored a request from the committee to appear: a refusal which had Greens Senator Sarah Hansen-Young calling for them to be forced to give testimony.
“I just want to put on the record that we did request that Meta, Snapchat and Tiktok appear today,” she said.
Rachel Lord cannot possibly believe her own self-serving testimony. And her “unintended consequences of the legislation” are laughable at best.
Social media is addictive by design, and every year millions of $$ are poured into research making it so. It has proven negative effects, particularly among teenagers, like increased anxiety, depression, and poor body image. And these impacts are linear… not just linked to overuse. They start from minute 1. The government owes it to society to put guardrails in place that help parents parent, and not just give unfettered access to our children and blindly hope all will be OK.