The Australian Senate passed a law banning social media use for young children on Thursday, becoming the first country in the world to have such a legislation.
Social media platforms, including TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram, will have to cough up a fine of 33 million US dollars should they fail to prevent children younger than 16 from holding accounts on these websites.
The Senate passed the bill 34 votes to 19. The House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved the legislation 102 votes to 13.
The House has yet to endorse opposition amendments made in the Senate. But that is a formality since the government has already agreed they will pass, reported AP.
The ban faced opposition from privacy advocates and some child rights groups, but 77% of the population wanted it, according to the latest polls.
Australia’s domestic media backed the ban led by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, the country’s biggest newspaper publisher, with a campaign called “Let Them Be Kids”.
The ban could, however, strain Australia’s relationship with key ally the United States, where X owner Elon Musk, a central figure in the administration of president-elect Donald Trump, said in a post this month that it seemed a “backdoor way to control access to the Internet by all Australians”.
YouTube, however, is exempt from the ban because it is used in schools.
The companies had argued that the legislation be postponed until after the age verification trial.
“It’s cart before the horse,” said Sunita Bose, managing director of Digital Industry Group.
“We have the bill but we don’t have guidance from the Australian government around what are the right methods that a whole host of services subject to this law will need to employ,” Bose added, speaking to Reuters.
“This is boomers trying to tell young people how the internet should work to make themselves feel better,” said Sarah Hanson-Young, a senator for the left-leaning Greens, in a late Senate sitting.
With inputs from AP, Reuters
