Pat PilcherSteps are being taken to ban kids under the age of 16 from accessing social media platforms, but PAT PILCHER argues that the idea is unworkable.
National MP Catherine Wedd has announced a Members’ Bill to see kids under 16 banned from social media platforms in New Zealand. Like all legislation, Wedd’s bill starts with good intentions. Wedd (Hawkes Bay MP for the Tukituki electorate) said, “Right now, we aren’t managing the risks for our young people well”. The PM, Chris Luxon, also commented that the bill would help prevent online bullying and keep inappropriate content away from Kiwi kids.
These are all laudable goals, but how on earth will this bill be enforceable, how much will it cost to make the legislation work, and is there a better solution?
Banning kids from social media sounds great when the political optics are considered. Hard-nosed policies, including large-scale layoffs in the public sector, ongoing funding problems with education and health and NZ’s poorly performing economy (which, to be fair, has been driven by an increasingly turbulent global market), have all contributed to the coalition government’s slippage in the polls. Policies such as the proposed social media ban are likely to be seen by voters in a far less negative light, and debate surrounding the bill will handily generate a welcome distraction from the many pressing issues facing the government.
But here’s the thing: Political optics often don’t equate to practical and positive outcomes. Making the ban workable will not be easy, and it will also be costly to implement and enforce.
Virtually no social media platforms require age checks. Will social media behemoths such as Facebook and X add an age check option to their platforms to appease the political whims of lawmakers from a small nation at the arse-end of the South Pacific? Somehow, I doubt it.
A case in point is Australia’s Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024, which sets a minimum age of 16 for social media accounts and, like NZ’s proposed laws, is aimed at protecting youth from online harm.
While some social media platforms added age verification measures, overall enforcement in Australia remains inconsistent, as not all platforms have complied with Australian law. At the time of writing, Facebook/Instagram both use AI-based age estimation and ID verification. At the same time, TikTok requires users to enter their birthdate but has faced criticism for weak enforcement, as has Snapchat, whose age checks rely on self-reported data. X (formerly known as Twitter) also uses age check prompts but lacks proper verification.
To date, Reddit relies on self-reported birthdates. Discord requires users to confirm their age and has no strict verification process. WhatsApp and YouTube Kids are exempt from the Aussie laws due to their educational and communication focus.
Critics rightly argue that Australian law is effectively useless until all social media platforms offer robust age checks that kids can’t circumvent, which means a verification process using passports and birth certificates.
While Wedd’s bill might raise awareness about online safety, it’ll also shift the emphasis on keeping kids safe away from parents to lawmakers, which is at odds with the coalition’s prevailing ideologies.
From a tech and geopolitical perspective, the outlook for the bill is even gloomier. Virtually all social media platforms are based in the US/EU and Asia, well outside of New Zealand lawmakers’ jurisdiction. Most platform owners will likely look at New Zealand’s laws, shrug and move on. Given the spotty implementation of age checks in Australia by social media platforms, it’s probable that New Zealand will see most platforms unwilling to bear the costs and added complexity of cooperating with NZ lawmakers.
Even if the NZ government were to block non-compliant social media platforms from operating in New Zealand, their ability to make the bans workable would, at best, be questionable. Kiwi lawmakers only need to look to the UK’s Online Safety Act, which requires robust age verification to prevent kids under 18 from accessing online porn. While based on good intentions, most Brits now commonly resort to DNS tweaks and VPNs or other measures to get their fix of adult content from offshore. Enforcing this (as with piracy) has involved the UK government embarking on a costly (and losing) game of whack-a-mole.
Tech-savvy kids will most likely resort to using freely available VPNs to encrypt their internet connection and make it appear as if they are online from outside of New Zealand. Based on this, how will Wedd’s member bill ever be workable?
Critically, asking social media providers to tool up and add age verification to their platforms to comply with a market smaller than Manhattan isn’t likely to go down well. Why would social media companies bear the cost when simply pulling their operations out of NZ is a far more cost-effective alternative? Most social media providers have operations in NZ purely as a marketing exercise, both of which can be done outside of NZ. At the same time, access to their services (which also operate outside of NZ) continues unhindered. The net outcome? Job losses and little to no change in the number of teens accessing social media.
Banning non-compliant platforms and monitoring for breaches will also involve industry costs. ISPs will be hit with compliance costs as they’re told to block internet traffic from social media platforms in NZ. Most cash-strapped ISPs won’t absorb these costs; they’ll pass them onto consumers who are already struggling with the cost of living. Who will be tasked with the monitoring of possible breaches? Who will pay for it? (Hint: it’ll be taxpayers). What will it even cost, and more critically, how effective will it be against kids using VPNs and other countermeasures?
Even though the Wedd’s members’ bill may have arisen out of good intentions, it’s unlikely to generate the intended results. As I’ve shown above, it’s likely to create more problems than it solves.
So, is there a better solution? Yes and no. Social media is a necessary evil, and like any tool, it can be a force for good when used properly or a cesspit of the worst kind when misused.
Any workable solution aimed at cleaning up social media to make it a safe place for our kids is going to take time to implement and require the cooperation of governments outside of NZ. As the Australian example demonstrates, the law is barely being followed, and there’s little to stop teens from using a false birthdate. Until the problem is tackled by a sizeable portion of the global market, social media providers will have no incentive to make any real effort beyond the token processes used in Australia.
A possible short-term solution might be the introduction of a voluntary code of conduct which requires social media platforms to have local content administrators moderate content. This was commonplace on early large online bulletin boards such as Compuserve and saw online communities policing their own behaviour. Facebook already does this to a limited degree with private Facebook groups, so it might be a slightly more palatable option for social media providers.
The other approach needs to be education and awareness. Kids need to know what is not cool online, and parents need to know how to check on their kids’ online exploits and what the signs of online bullying and other negative behaviour are, as well as how to talk to their kids about this issue.
In short, there is no one single magic bullet that’ll fix such a complex and messy issue. Either way, we at Witchdoctor believe that applying an unworkable ban on tech-savvy teens isn’t the answer and worse still, more pressing issues such as the lack of consistency of advertising standards laws between online and broadcast media, cyber bullying are all likely to remain unaddressed.
+ Our Kids Online is an excellent resource for parents looking to keep kids safe on the internet: https://www.ourkidsonline.info/
