Children will find ways around Australia's social media ban, says Belinda Barnet of Swinburne University of Technology, comparing the ban to the minimum drinking age. But that doesn't mean the policy should be abandoned.

Melbourne

Belinda Barnett, Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications at Swinburne University of Technology, expressed support for new legislation banning specific social media platforms for children. She described the measure as groundbreaking, aiming to prevent harm from addictive and potentially unsafe online environments.

Barnett acknowledged that children may attempt to bypass the ban, but argued this does not undermine its necessity. She clarified that messaging apps like WhatsApp are exempted to maintain essential communication, and emphasized that the internet remains accessible through other means, such as news sites and group chats.

'It's not like the entire internet has been shut down'

And let's get more on this. We're joined by Belinda Barnett, Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications at Swyburn University of Technology in Melbourne, whose research focuses on social media, data privacy, and platform regulation. Welcome to the program and thank you for your time. You're a supporter of this ban. You've called it a groundbreaking piece of legislation. Explain to us why. Well, we have these big technology companies, some of the most powerful companies in the world, and they've designed products that are addictive by design. And what this legislation is attempting to do is to just prevent harms to our children. So we don't feel that kids are ready to be exposed to some of these products just yet. Perhaps down the track, they will improve their safety features and they'll become less toxic places, for example, and then they wouldn't actually need to be a part of the list. Now this ban, it wasn't even in force and yet some tech-savvy teens, they were already talking about ways to bypass or to block it, even migrating to other platforms. In your opinion, how effective can the ban be and can it be enforced properly? Well, of course kids are going to find ways around it. It's part of the job description of kids to kind of figure things out. So I don't think that that means that we should abandon it altogether in the same way that kids find their way around minimum drinking age, for example. It doesn't mean that you abandon this policy altogether. Children, just to flesh this out a bit more, children will still be able to use many apps while logged out of their profiles and the ban doesn't cover messaging platforms, we understand, like WhatsApp or social video games. What are the risks there? Well, I think that, I mean, there are risks associated with messaging apps, but I think the messaging apps have been exempted for the simple reason that kids do actually need to use these apps for community and to communicate with each other. So the apps that have been included have more significant risks associated with them. So something like WhatsApp, for example, kids can use to get together, it's exempted. They can use it to get a group together of their friends and stay in constant contact. Critics and teens, I mean, we heard some critical voices before we came to you for this interview. Some of the critics and teens there were arguing that this ban violates young people's freedom of expression and access to information in communities, especially for kids in remote or isolated areas or situations. What do you say to that? I say that it does actually restrict their ability to access certain kinds of information and that what they need to do is to find other parts of the internet to use to get that information. For example, going to news websites or creating groups with friends on WhatsApp, for example. So the point that I wanna emphasise here is it's not like the entire internet has been shut down. Belinda Barnett, we wanna thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate your time.

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