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Tech companies in Australia will face stiff fines for violating its new law, one of the strictest social media crackdowns in the world. It bans anyone under 16 years old from opening or having a social media account. But how do you stop a teen from using social media? NPR's Bobby Allyn reports.
BOBBY ALLYN, BYLINE: Finn Hillier is a 15-year-old who lives in Adelaide in southern Australia. When he's not playing basketball or water polo, he's staring at his phone.
FINN HILLIER: Apps like TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat, and that's mainly throughout the morning and afternoon 'cause I'm pretty busy most days.
ALLYN: Busy with school. He's in 10th grade, where phone use isn't allowed, but he says kids are still doing it, sneakily texting or scrolling in the bathroom. That is supposed to get a lot harder. Last month, Australia passed a law banning kids under 16 from being on social media or opening new accounts. Hillier says life without social media is unthinkable.
FINN: Yeah, I definitely feel a lot more disconnected. It would make me feel a lot more bored throughout the day 'cause my life mainly consists of social media.
ALLYN: Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation recently that the law is aimed at breaking kids' compulsive digital habits.
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ANTHONY ALBANESE: I want children to have a childhood. I want them to engage with each other.
ALLYN: Studies on whether social media is harmful for kids have had mixed results, but Albanese says the Australian government was driven by concerns about bullying, toxic content and the addictive nature of social media apps.
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ALBANESE: This is world-leading legislation, but I assure you, the whole world is watching.
ALLYN: Predictably, Silicon Valley is fighting back. Tech companies say the law is government overreach and a suppression of free speech. Tech firms have also wondered how exactly enforcing age minimums is going to work. Government IDs were floated as a way to verify age, but that was nixed over privacy concerns. The law says platforms need to take reasonable steps to keep kids under 16 off apps. Technologists have been asking, what does that mean?
SHAANAN COHNEY: The Australian government does not seem to have listened to the technical submissions from the experts who actually have domain expertise, and this is where there's a lot of concern.
ALLYN: That's Shaanan Cohney, a computer science professor at the University of Melbourne. He says one idea has been to rely on facial recognition services to guess a young person's age. But he tested one of the proposed face-scanning technologies, and he says it has a race problem. It can come close to guessing a Caucasian person's face but struggled with a dark-skinned face.
COHNEY: So the very algorithms that were cited as highly effective by these age assurance companies had an average error of about five years when faced with a western African face, so my view is the technology is not ready yet.
ALLYN: The Australian government did not return a request for comment, but officials have said if tech companies can figure out how to target young people with advertisements, surely they can verify someone's age. It's certainly an effort that has wide support. A recent poll by YouGov found that 77% of Australians favor the under-16 social media ban. Back in Adelaide, Hillier is conflicted. He says he's had friends who were bullied on Snapchat, and sometimes he thinks he should spend less time on social media.
FINN: TikTok can kind of be a bit sort of misleading with its algorithm, giving you stuff that can make you feel a bit more insecure about stuff, like people flexing how rich they are or how well they're doing in life.
ALLYN: At the same time, he's found community on social media. It's how he stays in touch with his friends. He can't imagine just turning that off because he's under 16. He does admit this, though - if he spent less time scrolling, he'd probably brush up on his basketball and water polo skills. Bobby Allyn, NPR News.
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