The Government has introduced legislation that would prevent children under 16 from holding accounts on major social media platforms, putting New Zealand alongside a growing number of countries attempting to restrict young people’s access to social media.
The Online Safety (Minimum Age and Child Safety Risk Assessment) Bill, introduced to Parliament on 24 August, would require high-risk social media platforms to take “reasonable steps” to ensure their users are aged 16 or older. Platforms could use existing account information, facial age estimation, digital identity services, or formal identification to establish a user’s age.
The proposed restrictions would apply to platforms including Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, X, and Twitch. The legislation would also cover AI companion services designed primarily to simulate social or emotional relationships.
However, not every online service would be affected. Messaging services such as WhatsApp and Messenger, online games, educational platforms, music services and professional networks such as LinkedIn would be excluded from the proposed age restrictions.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said the Government was acting because of concerns about the effects of social media on young people’s wellbeing.
“One in three children aged between 13 and 17 are now spending at least five hours on social media a day,” Luxon said. He argued that social media exposes children to harmful content, addictive technology and pressures that can affect their family life, mental health, sleep and education.
The Bill would place responsibility on technology companies rather than children or their parents. No penalties would be imposed on under-16s or their caregivers. Instead, platforms that fail to meet their obligations could face penalties of up to 10 per cent of their global annual revenue.
The proposal has nevertheless faced political opposition. New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has rejected the legislation, arguing that restricting children’s access to social media should primarily remain the responsibility of parents. ACT has also opposed the Government’s proposal, meaning the Bill currently lacks the support of two coalition partners. Labour has indicated in-principle support but has called for changes through the select committee process.
Questions have also been raised about how effective and practical the restrictions would be. Children may attempt to circumvent age restrictions, including through false information or other methods. The Government acknowledges that the legislation would not prevent every under-16 from accessing social media.
Privacy is another concern, particularly around age-verification technology. The Government says users would not be required to provide formal identification as the only method of proving their age. It also proposes additional protections requiring information collected for age verification to be used only for that purpose and destroyed afterwards.
This bill has created a lot of noise for teenagers, parents, and young adults on whether this is a good decision. I spoke to a parent and ex-highschool teacher about his perspective on the proposed bill:
Do you think banning social media for under-16s is an effective way to protect children, or should parents have the primary responsibility for deciding when their children use social media?
I am probably going to sit on the fence a bit with all my responses, but that is because this is such a multi-faceted issue and there is no such thing as a silver bullet.
I don’t think that banning social media for under-16s is going to be effective in any meaningful way. I really do hope I am wrong but, at this point, it feels like closing the barn doors after the horses have already bolted.
As an ex-high school teacher, and a parent of two teenage daughters, I think that parents/guardians should be the ones who set the guardrails and expectations for young people, and schools can be a good way of reinforcing those lessons, but I remain very sceptical that a significant percentage of parents will abide by, or make their young people abide by, such a ban.
I also have questions around those young people under 16 who are already on social media. What happens with them? Teenagers are very practiced at finding their way around rules and boundaries; how is central government/ parents supposed to ensure it isn’t being accessed? If it is unenforceable, why bother enacting a law?
Do you think the benefits of keeping children off social media outweigh the potential disadvantages, such as limiting their ability to communicate with friends or participate in online communities?
Again, this is tricky but, on the balance, yes. While social media can be a wonderful tool to engage young people in positive ways, like taking part in social action and awareness of people and perspectives that are different to their own, social media algorithms don’t seem to be set up with wellbeing as a primary driver.
Limiting communication and interaction is a valid argument in favour, especially for young people who may be physically or socially isolated, as it can help them build communities that aren’t limited to geographic proximity.
“Social media” is also becoming so pervasive that it is hard to find any sort of communication platform that doesn’t have at least elements built in, and I would argue that the harmful ways it is being used far exceed the occurrences of positive use.
What impact do you currently see social media having on students’ learning, concentration, relationships or wellbeing, and do you think a ban would change this?
Without wanting to sound like an actual boomer, video games (and the way they reward players) have been training people, and especially young people, to seek and respond to instant gratification. Social media platforms have massively reinforced this and created an often harmful metric for self-worth in young (and not-so-young people). With the massive rise in short-form videos, it has also had an impact on peoples’ ability to concentrate. It is also ever-present and hard to get away from, so when there are negative things happening (like online bullying) it both spreads fast and wide and is almost impossible to ignore. You can’t just go home and ignore bullies anymore.
In my opinion, removing those negative impacts would improve young peoples’ lives, even with some of the positives also being removed. In saying all that, I don’t think a ban would realistically do all this.
