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Australia is set to become the first country to implement a minimum age for social media use on Wednesday, with platforms like Instagram, TikTok and YouTube forced to block more than a million accounts, marking the beginning of an expected global wave of regulation.<\/strong><\/p>\n From midnight (1300 GMT), 10 of the biggest platforms will be required to block Australians aged under 16 or be fined up to A$49.5 million ($33 million). The law received harsh criticism from major technology companies and free speech advocates, but was praised by parents and child advocates.<\/p>\n The rollout closes out a year of speculation about whether a country can block children from using technology that is built into modern life. And it begins a live experiment that will be studied globally by lawmakers who want to intervene directly because they are frustrated by what they say is a tech industry that has been too slow to implement effective harm-minimisation efforts.<\/p>\n Governments from Denmark to Malaysia \u2013 and even some states in the U.S., where platforms are rolling back trust and safety features \u2013 say they plan similar steps, four years after a leak of internal Meta documents showed the company knew its products contributed to body image problems and suicidal thoughts among teenagers while publicly denying the link existed.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile Australia is the first to adopt such restrictions, it is unlikely to be the last,\u201d said Tama Leaver, a professor of internet studies at Curtin University.<\/p>\n \u201cGovernments around the world are watching how the power of Big Tech was successfully taken on. The social media ban in Australia \u2026 is very much the canary in the coal mine.\u201d<\/p>\n A spokesperson for the British government, which in July began forcing websites hosting pornographic content to block under-18 users, said it was \u201cclosely monitoring Australia\u2019s approach to age restrictions.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen it comes to children\u2019s safety, nothing is off the table,\u201d they added.<\/p>\n Few will scrutinise the impact as closely as the Australians. The eSafety Commissioner, an Australian regulator tasked with enforcing the ban, hired Stanford University and 11 academics to analyse data on thousands of young Australians covered by the ban for at least two years.<\/p>\n Wall Street\u2019s main index is closed lower on Monday, with the Dow dropping just under half a percent, the S&P 500 shedding more than a third of a percent, and the Nasdaq ticking down modestly.<\/p>\n Though the ban covers 10 platforms initially, including Alphabet\u2019s YouTube, Meta\u2019s Instagram and TikTok, the government has said the list will change as new products appear and young users switch to alternatives.<\/p>\n Of the initial 10, all but Elon Musk\u2019s X have said they will comply using age inference \u2013 guessing a person\u2019s age from their online activity \u2013 or age estimation, which is usually based on a selfie. They might also check with uploaded identification documents or linked bank account details.<\/p>\n Musk has said the ban \u201cseems like a backdoor way to control access to the internet by all Australians\u201d and most platforms have complained that it violates people\u2019s right to free speech. An Australian High Court challenge overseen by a libertarian state lawmaker is pending.<\/p>\n For the social media businesses, the implementation marks a new era of structural stagnation as user numbers flatline and time spent on platforms shrinks, studies show.<\/p>\n Platforms say they don\u2019t make much money showing advertisements to under-16s, but they add that the ban interrupts a pipeline of future users. Just before the ban took effect, 86% of Australians aged 8 to 15 used social media, the government said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe days of social media being seen as a platform for unbridled self-expression, I think, are coming to an end,\u201d said Terry Flew, the co-director of University of Sydney\u2019s Centre for AI, Trust and Governance.<\/p>\n Platforms responded to negative headlines and regulatory threats with measures like a minimum age of 13 and extra privacy features for teenagers, but \u201cif that had been the structure of social media in the boom period, I don\u2019t think we\u2019d be having this debate,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nBEGINNING OF THE END<\/strong><\/h2>\n