Listen to Australian and world news and follow trending topics with SBS News Podcasts.
TRANSCRIPT
Greek teenager Giannis Bittis uses TikTok and Instagram to stay connected with his friends, but next year, he may be subjected to a social media ban.
Greece is now proposing a social media ban for those under 15 from next year, a move that Mr Bittis described would significantly impact his generation.
“A lot of kids that have engaged in social media from the age of 13 will have great difficulty now getting used to being without it if this is removed from their lives, because this is the way they keep contact with their friends, they communicate, and even though they are not communicating face to face, I believe this is a type of communication that if it is cut off, it will also cut off relationships between the kids.”
On Wednesday, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced the ban would be enforced from January 1 next year, if it’s approved by the parliament in the coming months.
He describes the measure as ‘difficult but necessary’, and says it’s not about removing kids from technology, but addresses issues such as anxiety, sleep problems and addiction to online platforms among children.
Greece is the latest European country that proposed a social media ban targeting teenagers and children, following France, Spain, Denmark and Poland, after Australia launched the world-first social media ban last December.
Meanwhile, European nations also tightened their regulations on social media. In February, Spain launched investigation into Meta, X and TikTok, after the platforms were alleged to spread AI-generated child sexual images.
Francesca Pisanu is the EU Advocacy Officer at Eurochild. She says while Australia’s ban has been a trigger point for Europe, the continent has long been concerned about the potential harm of social media on children.
“Children’s rights are a big priority for the EU, and the EU already has a strong framework when it comes to children’s rights in a digital environment. At the EU level, we’ve had the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) that was protecting children’s data and then in 2022 we were discussing the Digital Services Act. That is also aimed at ensuring a high level of privacy and security for children. So it comes with no surprise that the EU is really concerned about the potential harm of social media on children and that (it) really wants to take some steps.”
The announcement by the Greek government comes at a time when Australia is beginning to review the early outcomes of the social media ban.
A survey conducted by YouGov in March shows that 61 per cent of parents noticed two to four positive behavioural changes on their children following the ban, including more in-person social interactions, children being more present and engaged during interactions, and improved parent-children relationships.
However, two in five parents also observed negative impacts, such as shifts to less regulated platforms and reduced peer support online.
Some experts have argued that the success of the social media ban will have to be measured over years, rather than in a short period of time.
Professor Lisa Given from RMIT University says while she’s not surprised to see European nations to follow Australia’s practice, she wishes they could have waited longer.
“I was hoping that those countries might actually wait to see how successful the legislation here would be. You know, we’ve just had a report from the Safety Commissioner around the ban, which demonstrates that there’s a long way to go in terms of compliance. We still have many, many children who are still on the platforms. And so my concern, I suppose, for Greece and other countries, is really that this may not be the solution they’re looking for, and it may not be as successful as they might hope.”
Professor Given says the key to enforcing the ban is the age verification, which can rely on digital IDs or facial scanning.
“And we’re already seeing evidence of that here in Australia, where children are, say, bypassing the facial scanning or the user behavior type age assurance technologies are presuming them to be older than they actually are.”
She says there are also ongoing concerns around privacy and data security — long-standing issues within the European Union..
“So for example, facial scanning, where they simply scan the face and they don’t keep any record of that is perhaps quite safe. But when you’re actually looking at people’s existing data, there are certainly privacy concerns around you know, why are they making this judgment about my age? What are they basing that on? And people may be very concerned that those data are actually incorrect.”
Professor Given says Europe may already have an advantage over Australia when it comes to making social media safer for children — the Digital Services Act, enforced in 2022..
“That act and that legislation actually is far more robust than the social media legislation, in that it actually holds technology companies accountable for the content on the platforms, but also the algorithms, the different design features that can make those systems quite unsafe for a lot of users. And so I think, you know, it really in Europe, they may not need to do more than actually enact the legislation that they already have and go after the tech companies with significant fines which are already laid out in the legislation.”