Australia to double fine on platforms for flouting teen social media ban

Australia will double the fines for violation of the strict regulations for use of social media platforms by underage children to prevent the circumvention of the rules, the government has announced over the weekend.

New laws will raise the maximum penalty to Aus$99 million ($68 million) for the systemic breaches of the regulation and will also empower the eSafety watchdog with more power to combat the platform, according to the government statement.

The independent watchdog was currently “conducting an active investigation into potential compliance issues” at Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube, the government said in a statement.

“Big tech is clearly not doing enough to comply with the law – there are still too many children on social media,” Australia’s prime minister Anthony Albanese said.

"These measures are a reflection of how seriously we take any failure by social media companies to comply."

The underage users have found ways to circumvent the regulations by creating fake accounts, logging into the social media platforms using older user account, or by browsing privately.

The effectiveness of the regulation in Australia is of great interest to a growing number of countries that have passed or are considering introducing such bans,including Britain, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates and New Zealand.

One of the first peer-reviewed evaluations of the Australian measure, published this month in the British Medical Journal, found “insufficient evidence” that it had much impact on social media use by youngsters.

The researchers surveyed more than 400 young people immediately before the restrictions came into effect, and again three months after, finding “substantial circumvention” of the rules.

There was little change for users aged 12-13, a slight decrease for the 14-15 age group and an increase in use for those aged 16 and older.