Kerre Woodham: A social media ban sends a strong message

National, as you will have heard, is pushing ahead with its social media regulation bill, but it's going to have to do the heavy lifting itself. Neither New Zealand First nor ACT, its coalition partners, are supporting a ban on social media use for under-16s. Labour may yet come to the rescue of the bill, but by crikey, Erica Stanford's going to have to jump through hoops to get them to come onboard. They will want their pound of flesh before they agree to support the bill.  

The Prime Minister and Minister of Education, Erica Stanford, said they are determined to progress the bill because the Government could not accept the harm being done to a generation of New Zealand children. One in three children aged between 13 and 17 are now spending at least five hours on social media a day, according to the government fact sheet. Social media is exposing them to harmful content, addictive technology, and pressures they are simply not equipped to deal with, and it's affecting their family life, their mental health, their sleep, and their education.  

The PM said obviously parents have a role to play in monitoring what social media platforms their children are on, but that's if the parents know they're on the social media platforms. There's a piece from Chris Schulz in the Spinoff saying he didn't realise his teenage son was on Instagram until it was far, far too late. They know now, and their 12 year old is well and truly locked down social media wise. But for many parents, they simply don't know. The kids can do workarounds. The Prime Minister says we have protections to keep children safe in the real world, but we need them in the virtual world too. Erica Stanford told Mike Hosking this morning that they don't expect every child to be protected from the harms of social media simply because an Act of Parliament is passed, but it will send a strong message. 

"We knew that this was really important. We know that, you know, it's been done overseas, but it's been really hard for them to get traction overseas, and we wanted to be fast followers. If we'd done something immediately and not learned from Australia and the mistakes that they made, we'd be in a very different position. But I'm a lot more confident now that we've taken the time, we've taken on, you know, on board this work and been that fast follower. Now we've got all this evidence from the UK and the EU and Australia, you know, we're able to be in a position with a much stronger piece of legislation. And remember, it's the very first time in our country's history we have a dedicated online safety bill for children." 

And really, it can't come too soon for some kids. Once you know something, once you see something, once you read something, you can't unsee it. You can't unknow it. There are some horrific images that our children, and they are still children, are exposed to. In the olden days, this is pre computers, pre digital era, there were still things you could find, but you had to really work hard to find them. You had to work really hard to find pornography and hardcore pornography. You had to work really hard to find graphic video images. If people wanted to insult you, bully you, be cruel to you, they would, but they had to see the whites of your eyes. They had to see the effect it was having on you. These days with technology, it's in your kid's bed with them. This cruelty, this vileness, these pornographic acts are all in bed with your 13 year old.  

The legislation is going to require high risk social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook to take reasonable steps to check users are over 16, and that will involve several methods, including using existing account information, facial age estimation, digital ID services, and formal ID. And to those parents like the one who sent a text to Mike: "I am a parent. I am currently responsibly using time and app limits in ways that make sense for my family. Your policy will forbid parents from making these choices. This does not back me or parents like me, rather the opposite." To that parent, I say cool your jets. Do the police come knocking on your door if you let your 13 year old watch an R16 movie? No, they do not. You can make the rules for your household and your kids.  

But interestingly, also in the fact sheet, a survey of young New Zealanders found half of those surveyed, half of the teenagers surveyed, felt they had been given access to social media too young. That's that whole point of you cannot unsee and unknow what you've seen and been exposed to. 39% said they wished social media had never been invented. This is just as Erica Stanford says, it's sending a strong message to the tech companies that you are responsible. It's helping create a norm that social media is not for under 16s, that children grow up knowing they cannot have access to it legally until they're 16 and it's backing parents who want to keep their kids off social media for as long as they possibly can.