Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his team will be watching closely as Australia rolls out its social media ban for under-16s. Photo / Jed Bradley
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his team will be watching closely as Australia rolls out its social media ban for under-16s. Photo / Jed Bradley
A parliamentary select committee tasked with researching how New Zealand could reduce social media harm for children says the Government should consider appointing a social media regulator.
The education and workforce committee’s interim report, published yesterday, also urges the Government to consider whether online advertising for things such as alcoholshould be restricted for teens.
The long-standing issue is politically pertinent, with two members’ bills addressing social media harms before the House and Australia introducing a world-first social media ban for under-16s.
New Zealand will be watching closely as Australia rolls out its ban, which includes hefty fines of A$49.5 million ($56.8m) for firms that don’t weed out ineligible users. Australia’s ban captures popular apps Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and some elements of YouTube.
Education Minister Erica Stanford said the select committee’s interim report and findings appeared, at first glance, to align with her own views. The report recommends the Government look at:
Restricting access to social media platforms for under-16s;
Regulating deepfake tools (which can be used to produce fake sexualised images using a person’s likeness) in New Zealand;
Whether current legislation is fit for purpose;
Introducing a national regulator – this could introduce additional requirements for firms and address non-compliance or complaints among firms and parents;
What role the Government should play in designing online platforms;
Whether there is a need to restrict online advertising of harmful products, such as alcohol, tobacco, and gambling, for under-18-year-olds;
The level of responsibility parents should have in protecting their children from online harm;
The level of liability online platforms should have for harmful content hosted through their services.
The report’s recommendations were based on majority support from the nine-person cross-party panel.
Although in agreement that something needed to be done about the real and significant harm young people faced online, the Act Party said New Zealand needed to avoid a “knee-jerk” response that could push young internet users to unregulated corners of the internet.
The committee’s inquiry was initiated by Act MP Dr Parmjeet Parmar. The party said the report leaned “heavily into recommendations on policy options”, which it said was “premature and risks compromising the quality and integrity of the final report”.
Act raised concerns about the report’s “premature signalling of strong support for significant new interventions, such as the establishment of a national regulator or an age-based social media ban”.
The committee’s inquiry was initiated by Act MP Dr Parmjeet Parmar. Photo / Alex Burton
Labour broadcasting and media spokesman Reuben Davidson, who has drafted an alternative social media safety bill, said some of the report’s recommendations were “excellent” and were also features of his own bill, such as creating a regulator to monitor social media and improve safety, and making it easy for users to see the details of the algorithms behind their social media platforms.
“We should be doing all we can to make online platforms safer for everyone.”
Labour's Reuben Davidson says New Zealand "should be doing all we can to make online platforms safer for everyone".
Stanford said New Zealand was in the “fortunate position” of being able to watch and learn from Australia’s under-16s ban.
“We watch very closely what happens in Australia ... but we have nothing. We don’t have an online child protection act, we don’t have a regulator, we have nothing. So it’s a good place to be and a bad place to be.”
Those mechanisms would help to change the behaviour of social media companies, rather than an outright ban, she said.
“What are you doing to protect our kids’ data, what are you doing about algorithms, what are you doing about harmful material?”
Julia Gabel is a Wellington-based political reporter. She joined the Herald in 2020 and has most recently focused on data journalism.
