- Australia's government approved a law that would ban social media for kids under 16.
- The legislation puts the onus on tech companies to keep children off their platforms.
- But how exactly companies are supposed to comply remains a big question.
Australia's government agreed to a sweeping social media ban this week in an attempt to protect young people from online harm, though exactly how tech companies like TikTok, Meta, and Snapchat would verify users' age remains a giant question mark.
The law gives tech companies one year to figure out how to keep children under 16 from using their social platforms or risk up to $32 million in fines.
The legislation is among the strictest of its kind as countries around the world increasingly target social media as the next frontier for child safety laws.
"The law places the onus on social media platforms — not parents or young people — to take reasonable steps to ensure these protections are in place," Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a November 21 press release.
The country's House of Representatives overwhelmingly supported the bill in a 102-13 vote on Wednesday, while Australia's Senate voted 34 to 19 in favor of the legislation on Thursday.
Some pornography websites and online gambling platforms have implemented ID checks in recent years to comply with a wave of legislation requiring online age verification in several US states, asking users to submit a selfie with a government-approved ID.
Australia's new law specifically bars social media companies from asking for users' IDs in an effort to protect privacy rights.
Julie Inman Grant, Australia's eSafety commissioner in charge of implementing the new law, told The New York Times that age verification technologies are improving daily and expressed faith in tech companies' ability to comply.
"They've got financial resources, technologies and some of the best brainpower," she told the outlet. "If they can target you for advertising, they can use the same technology and know-how to identify and verify the age of a child."
A government-commissioned trial looking into technologies that could be used for age verification, including biometrics, is underway in Australia and is set to deliver its report next summer.
Google and Meta had lobbied to delay the vote until the commission delivered its report. Snap Inc., which owns Snapchat, said "device-level age verification" was the best possible option to meet the requirements. Meanwhile, X CEO Elon Musk suggested the legislation was "a backdoor way to control access to the internet by all Australians."
Other critics of the legislation, including opposition lawmakers and some mental health experts, have expressed concern that the bill could have unintended consequences, especially for marginalized young people who have historically used social media to find online support.
Support for the legislation appears to be high in the country. A YouGov poll released ahead of the vote last week found that 77% of Australians backed the ban.
"This is a landmark reform," Albanese said. "We know some kids will find workarounds, but we're sending a message to social media companies to clean up their act."