SYDNEY, 9 October, 2024: A coalition of over 140 leading Australian and International experts have signed an open letter to the Australian Prime Minister and Premiers expressing their concerns regarding the proposed social media ban for under sixteen year olds.

The letter is a joint effort by the Steering Committee members of the Australian Child Rights Taskforce of which Professor Amanda Third, and Professor Philippa Collin, Co-Directors of the Young and Resilient Research Centre are members.

The letter states that while the group understand the risks that social media poses for children and young people, their concern is that a ‘ban’ is too blunt an instrument to address these risks effectively.

Specially, the group’s concerns include:

● Bans affect rights to access and participation: The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child states that ‘national policies should be aimed at providing children with the opportunity to benefit from engaging with the digital environment and ensuring their safe access to it.’

● Parental consent does not fix unsafe products. Placing requirements on parents to consent to the use of ‘unsafe’ products does not drive up safety.

● Parents and carers often are not ‘the experts’, but will still be asked to make informed decisions. Placing responsibility on parents to provide consent, without adequate guidance and support, is unfair. Not all parents will be able to manage the responsibility of protection in the digital world.

● Implementing a ban effectively remains a challenge. There are not yet effective techniques for age assurance nor to verify parental consent, and privacy concerns remain.

● It creates even more risks for children who may still use platforms. Platforms would be disincentivised from offering child safety features for any younger users that do still ‘slip onto’ a platform via ineffective age assurance.

● It fails to drive up safety standards on platforms children will be allowed to use. Some social media ‘type’ services appear too integral to childhood to be banned, for example short form video streamers. But these too have safety risks like risks of dangerous algorithms promoting risky content. A ban does not function to improve the products children will be allowed to use.

Signatories to the open letter include the academics from Western Sydney University, the University of Melbourne, University of Wollongong, University of Queensland, RMIT University, Deakin University, University of Sydney, Curtin University, University of Technology Sydney, Edith Cowan University, Flinders University, Australian Catholic University, Swinburne University of Technology, Queensland University of Technology, University of Canberra, Victoria University, Australian National University, University of Newcastle, Monash University,  Murdoch University, Flinders University,  La Trobe University, Macquarie University, and Southern Cross University.

International signatories to the letter include academics from the London School of Economics and Political Science, UCLA, US, Cardiff University, UK, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, US, University of Amsterdam, University of London, McGill University, Canada, University College Dublin, Ireland, Nelson Mandela University, South Africa, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile and MICA, Ahmedabad, India among many others.

Read the full open letter here.

The letter has been released at a critical time in the development of public policy and discourse around this issue as this week a Social Media Summit will be hosted by the New South Wales and South Australian Governments in Sydney and Adelaide to address mounting community concerns about the adverse impact of social media on children and young people.

For more information about the open letter or to arrange media interviews with Professor Amanda Third or Professor Phillipa Collin contact Claire Absolum, Senior Communications Officer at c.absolum@westernsydney.edu.au.