A file photo of school children using their smartphones near the Barangaroo Ferry Terminal in Sydney, on Feb 24, 2021. Much remains unclear about the upcoming implementation in December of Australia’s groundbreaking regulation that sets a minimum age of 16 to use certain social media platforms. — MATTHEW ABBOT/The New York Times
SYDNEY: Australia has long been one of the most proactive countries in the world in trying to police the Internet. It has clashed with Elon Musk over violent videos and child exploitation on social platform X, forced Google and Facebook to pay for news, and tried to filter out large swaths of online content.
Its latest aim may be the most herculean yet. By December, the country wants to remove more than one million young teens from social media, under a groundbreaking law that sets a minimum age of 16 to use the platforms.
