Australia’s House of Representatives has passed a bill to ban under-16s from social media platforms, and it will now move on to the Senate for a final vote later this week. 

This groundbreaking law would make TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms liable to the tune of up to US$33 million if they don’t prevent young kids from having accounts. 

The Australian Senate is expected to vote on the bill tomorrow, and if it passes, platforms will have a year to work out how to implement age restrictions before penalties start being enforced. 

Critics of the legislation say it would isolate kids; take away what’s positive about social media; and remove incentives for platforms to be safer for the underage users who will inevitably find their way onto them. 

The Australian Human Rights Commission released a statement last week balancing the pros (protecting kids from harm) and cons (restricting kids from accessing information) of the bill. Its conclusion is that a blanket ban isn’t the right solution, and that placing a legal duty of care on social media companies, requiring them to take reasonable steps to make their platforms safer for kids, would be a better approach. 

That’s basically the goal of the KOSA and COPPA 2.0 bills that are currently making their way through the US government. COPPA 2.0 extends the age of non-consenting users (whose personal info companies can collect) from 13 to 16, while KOSA establishes a duty of care that forces platforms to give kids the strongest privacy settings by default. 

If Australia’s bill passes, it could pave the way for similar blanket legislation around the world. France is already considering a similar move, and its government commissioned a report that was released in April arguing kids shouldn’t be allowed on social media until they turn 18.