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Back in December, the Australian government introduced a new law to ban the under 16s from accessing social media. In the EU, members of the European Parliament have proposed a similar ban, proposing a harmonised EU digital minimum age of 16 for access to social media, video-sharing platforms and AI companions, while allowing 13- to 16-year-olds access with parental consent.
The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill is currently passing through the parliamentary process and amendments have been tabled to introduce a similar ban in the UK. With that in mind, the UK government has now announced a consultation on children's social media use.
The consultation will consider:
- working out the right minimum age for children to access social media, including exploring a ban for children under a certain age;
- exploring ways to improve the accuracy of age assurance for children to support the enforcement of minimum age limits so that children have age-appropriate experiences and see age-appropriate content;
- assessing if the current digital age of consent is too low;
- removing or limiting functionalities which drive addictive or compulsive use of social media, such as 'infinite scrolling'; and
- exploring further interventions to support parents in helping their children navigate the digital landscape, for example, further guidance or simpler parental controls
The government has said that it will respond to the consultation in the summer. Some of these issues are also being considered by the EU in the context of its proposed Digital Fairness Act, such as infinite scrolling.
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