Parliament votes to stop children using apps such as TikTok in policy championed by Emmanuel Macron
France’s parliament has approved a bill banning social media access for children under 15, making it the first EU country to bar children from apps such as TikTok.
The president, Emmanuel Macron, has championed the ban as a key reform of his final term in office and pledged to enforce it by September.
Continue reading...UK is latest country to set minimum age for social media access but big tech is fighting back globally against curbs
Arturo Béjar, a former employee turned whistleblower at Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, has talked to parents around the world. He says they share the same perspective: they dread the day their children are old enough to go online.
Governments appear to be listening too. This month the UK became the latest country to state that it would set a minimum age of 16 for accessing major social media platforms. Social media bans are becoming a legislative trend after the precedent set by Australia last year, when it imposed an age limit on platforms including Meta’s Instagram and Facebook, Google’s YouTube, Elon Musk’s X, TikTok and Snapchat.
Continue reading...Prime minister Anthony Albanese says too many children still on platforms but he is ‘heartened’ by world-leading law
Social media bans go global: big tech faces a reckoning after Australia’s crackdown
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The federal government will double the penalty for breaches of Australia’s youth social media ban to $99m, arguing tech companies are “not doing enough” to keep children off harmful social media sites.
And the eSafety commissioner, now investigating potential breaches of the law by Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube, will have its information-gathering powers strengthened under proposed further reforms.
Continue reading...As a host of countries move to rein in social media use by children, could this be technology’s big tobacco moment?
Continue reading...Liz Kendall also wants Ofcom to report to parliament every year on how effectively social media firms are keeping under-16s off their platforms
Starmer acknowledges some teenagers will get round these restrictons. But that does not make the rules pointless, he says.
Will it mean that no child ever looks at social media again? No.
But look, this might shock you, but it doesn’t shock parents of teenagers; they get around other laws too.
Some technology companies want us to think that social media is unchangeable, part of an almost natural order.
But we have to resist that kind of learned helplessness. We have agency, we can change it, and we will.
Continue reading...In today’s newsletter: With Keir Starmer expected to announce Australia-style restrictions, further problems – including AI chatbots - are on the horizon
Good morning. Keir Starmer’s expected speech next week about young people’s access to social media will be analysed as much for how it benefits the outcome of a certain byelection, as its safeguarding of children’s synapses.
After issuing an ultimatum to tech firms yesterday to block children’s phones from sharing nude images, the government is expected to make another major announcement about social media within days. Briefings suggest it will stop short of a blanket ban on under-16s accessing social media. But it will still amount to radical regulation, with Downing Street insisting that Starmer is up for a fight with big tech.
UK politics | Volodymyr Zelenskyy has revealed that he plans to invite King Charles on a state visit to Ukraine as early as this year, which would make him the most senior royal to travel to Kyiv since Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Middle East | Fears of a return to a full-scale regional war in the Middle East eased on Monday as Israel and Iran said they had halted attacks on each other after an appeal from Donald Trump to “immediately stop shooting”.
UK news | A report has found “widespread and concerning evidence” of bias and victim-blaming in the family courts – primarily disadvantaging women.
US news | Donald Trump was loudly booed when he was shown on the video screens at Madison Square Garden on Monday night at the NBA finals.
Unemployment | A government-funded pilot of “hyperlocal” job support in 10 neighbourhoods across England has shown “promising early signs of effectiveness”, including for young people, and could be scalable nationwide, a new evaluation has shown.
Continue reading...Ban could still be introduced in future after Commons back government bid to give extra powers to secretary of state
A proposed ban on social media for under-16s has been rejected by MPs.
Parliamentarians voted 307 to 173, majority 134, against the proposed change to the children’s wellbeing and schools bill, which was brought forward by Conservative peer and former minister John Nash.
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