MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Australia’s communications minister introduced world-first legislation in Parliament on Thursday that would allow prohibit children under 16 on social media, saying online safety was one of the toughest challenges for parents.

Michelle Rowland said TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, .

“This bill seeks to establish a new normative value in society that access to social media is not the defining characteristic of growing up in Australia,” Rowland told parliament.

“It is widely recognized that something needs to be done immediately to prevent young adolescents and children from being exposed to unfiltered and endless streams of content,” she added.

X owner Elon Musk warned that Australia intended to go further, posting on his platform: “This seems like a backdoor way of controlling access to the internet for all Australians. »

The bill has broad political support. Once this law goes into effect, platforms will have one year to determine how to implement the age restriction.

“For too many young Australians, social media can be harmful,” Rowland said. “Nearly two-thirds of Australians aged 14 to 17 have viewed extremely harmful content online, including drug abuse, suicide or self-harm, as well as violent material. A quarter of them have been exposed to content promoting unsafe eating habits.

A government study found 95 per cent of Australian carers rate online safety as one of their “toughest parenting challenges”, she said. Social media has a social responsibility and could do better to combat harm on its platforms, she added.

“It’s about protecting young people, not punishing or isolating them, and letting parents know we are on their side when it comes to supporting the health and well-being of their children.” , Rowland said.

Child protection and internet experts have raised concerns about the ban, including isolating 14- and 15-year-olds from their already established online social networks.

Rowland said no age restrictions would be imposed on messaging services, online games or platforms that substantially support users’ health and education.

“We are not saying that risks do not exist on messaging applications or online games. While users may still be exposed to harmful content by other users, they do not face the same algorithmic content curation and psychological manipulation to encourage near-infinite engagement,” she said. declared.

The government announcement Last week, a consortium led by the UK-based Age Check Certification Scheme was hired to examine various technologies for estimating and verifying ages.

As well as removing children under 16 from social media, Australia is also looking at ways to prevent children under 18 from accessing pornography online, a government statement said.

Tony Allen, chief executive of the Age Check Certification Scheme, said on Monday that technologies being considered included age estimation and inference. Inference involves establishing a series of facts about individuals that indicate that they are at least a certain age.

Rowland said platforms would also face fines of up to A$50 million ($33 million) if they misused users’ personal information obtained for age guarantee purposes.

Information used for age guarantees must be destroyed after achieving that goal, unless the user consents to it being retained, she said.

Digital Industry Group Inc., an advocate for Australia’s digital industry, said that while Parliament is expected to vote on the bill next week, there may not be time to “conduct meaningful consultations on the details of this globally unprecedented legislation.”

“Mainstream digital platforms have strict measures in place to keep young people safe, and a ban could push young people into darker, less safe online spaces lacking safety guardrails,” Sunita said Bose, general manager of DIGI, in a press release. “An abrupt ban does not encourage companies to continually improve safety, because the focus is on keeping teens away from the service, rather than keeping them safe while they are there.”