00:00Peter Dutton spoke today and said he wasn't just speaking as a politician, but also as
00:06a parent of teenage children.
00:08He pledged that he would put a ban for social media for people under the age of 16, and
00:14if his party was to win government, he would do that within the first 100 days.
00:18Now, right now, social media companies require you to be 13 if you're to have an account,
00:24but there are no penalties if you're younger, and there's no Australian laws preventing
00:27it.
00:28But there's something Peter Dutton says he would like to see changed.
00:33For younger children in particular, there's a high prevalence of many mental health conditions
00:38and issues around body image, bullying online.
00:43We've seen some tragic consequences as a result of that online environment having a negative
00:48impact on the minds of young, impressionable Australians.
00:53Now Peter Dutton also accused Anthony Albanese of being slow to act on this issue.
00:58The Prime Minister spoke today and he made the same accusation against Mr Dutton.
01:02Now the Prime Minister has previously talked about this issue and said that he would like
01:07to see a reduction in the age.
01:09He also pointed to what his government did in the budget, that is the $6.5 million they
01:14put towards a trial of age assurance technologies.
01:18Mr Albanese said he also would support a ban of social media for people under the age of
01:2316.
01:24Here's what he had to say.
01:26The reason why we're doing the trial is that social media is having a negative impact on
01:31young people.
01:32I want people to spend more time on the footy field or the netball court than they're spending
01:39on their phones, very clearly.
01:42And a ban, if it can be effective, is a good way to go.
01:48So Lorna, as you can hear from both those leaders, there is some common rhetoric between
01:52the two of them.
01:53Peter, it seems there is strong will on both sides of politics.
01:56Does that mean this is a given to be in place after the election?
02:00Well, Lorna, of course, this is a matter of political will and also the will of the people.
02:05But most of all, it's a matter of technology.
02:08Now we heard from a professor, Michael Salter, from the University of New South Wales today,
02:12an expert on this issue.
02:14He said right now the technology isn't there for this, but he said there are trials happening
02:19in many countries overseas and that some of them in the UK are particularly promising.
02:24He described how he thinks some of this technology could work.
02:27Here's some of what he had to say.
02:29The best case scenario is that we have a range of independent third party providers who we
02:36provide documentation to.
02:38There might be some face matching that they do to make sure that we're uploading our own
02:43material.
02:44When these sorts of measures have been in place in other areas for a while, they would
02:50then provide a token that we could embed in our browser.
02:54And as we're going through the internet, it basically tells service providers or tells
03:00people on our mobile phone what our age is.
03:05Mr Salter also suggested a good point of implementing this age verification would be an app store
03:11so that people would have to prove their age before they buy an app.
