Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026

Ms SPENDER (Wentworth) (19:11): I rise to speak on the Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026, which strengthens enforcement of the social media minimum age. This reform is overdue, and I do support it. In 2024, I spoke in support of the original minimum-age bill, which restricted access to social media for those under 16.

I commended the bill then and I do support again the intent of the bill today, though I will continue to reserve judgement on its effectiveness until it is implemented and I continue to urge the government to move on duty of care, because, until it moves on an online duty of care, these are just bandaids and are not dealing with the broader ecosystem and protecting not just our children but others from online harms.

The social media ban was a significant step towards addressing the concerns about social media impact on our young people: the addictive design of these platforms, exposure to extreme and distressing material and a growing sense of disconnection among young Australians. In the lead-up to that legislation, I spoke with countless parents and families who are genuinely frightened about what social media was doing to their kids: the bullying, the threats, the abuse and the sheer volume of harmful content these platforms had consistently failed to remove.

We had seen this play out as close to a game of whack-a-mole, with platforms removing harmful material only after the damage was done. That concern has since been vindicated. Meta and Google were recently found liable in a US trial for deliberately designing addictive products and for misleading consumers about the safety of their platforms.

We do not allow people to put unsafe items on our supermarket shelves—physical products. We should not allow that. We should expect safety in our digital products as well.

But we should also be honest about how this first phase of the ban has gone. The eSafety Commissioner has raised serious concerns that Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat are not properly complying with the minimum-age restrictions. Research from the University of Newcastle found that more than 80 per cent of under-16s in Australia were still using social media three months after the ban took place, and I have seen this reflected closely in my electorate.

One school in Wentworth ran an internal survey of students in years 8 to 10, receiving 142 responses. Of these students, only just under half—49 per cent—reported losing access to at least one social media account because of the ban. Of the rest, 45 per cent said their social media use stayed the same; 37 per cent said it had decreased; and a small number said it had actually increased.

Sixty-five per cent of students believed it remained easy for under-16s to access restricted platforms. Only a quarter thought the ban had reduced social media use overall. So students were not sure that it had worked significantly at all.

There has been a shift, but nowhere near what a ban would imply. I've also run leadership forums across my electorate to hear directly from young people on this issue. At a senior school forum of students aged between 15 and 17, opinion was genuinely split, with nine students still supporting the ban, seven opposing it and several remaining undecided.

Among supporters, the common view was that the ban came perhaps too late for their own cohort because they were already on social media, so it was harder to get off, frankly, and they were able to get around it. But they did see that a real opportunity lay in protecting the next generation of 13-year-olds coming through. Several noted that parents were already shifting younger siblings onto basic non-smart phones without access to social media apps, and that this approach seemed to be working well for that age group.

Among those opposed, the concerns were consistent and specific—that the ban is easy to circumvent, that age verification doesn't work and that new accounts can be created in minutes. Enforcement felt inconsistent. A 15-year-old was blocked, while a 14-year-old in the same friendship group was not.

One student described how a single student in a friendship group was banned from their social accounts, leading to that student's social exclusion. Another had run a campaign against the ban and met with politicians directly, telling me he believed that the intention was right, but the execution was poor. Several made the point that the ban, as it currently operates, targets a minority who are already addicted or being bullied while restricting everybody else and question whether this is the right way to design the policy.

At a junior school forum I ran with students around the ages of 11 and 12, the response was more positive. Twenty-three students supported the ban, eight did not. Those in favour shared positives about communicating more with friends in person, feeling more included and a reduction in cyberbullying.

One of my favourite comments was from an 11- or 12-year-old, who didn't have social media on her phone. She said, 'But my older brothers now talk to me more, and that is a good thing, and I appreciate that.' That was probably the most heartwarming story I heard. Those opposed to the ban pointed out how easy the restriction was to get around and the difficulty it created for friends who lived further apart geographically.

That was a real concern for students who board. I raise these voices because they matter. These are the young people who are intended to be protected by the legislation and their lived experience tells us that enforcement to date has fallen well short of the policy's intent, and that, because of this weak enforcement, it actually reduces the community support for the legislation because it's seen as too easy to get around and therefore not really making the difference that it wants to, or only punishing certain people but not being consistent.

The overwhelming feedback was that they do want this to work. Separate from these general harms, our community has also lived through profound tragedy. Graphic footage was livestreamed and shared online during and after the Bondi Junction attack in 2024 and two years later in Bondi Beach.

Children across the country have been exposed to this content. For children in my electorate, it is deeply personal. Despite the best efforts of the eSafety Commissioner, young people are still encountering this material.

This goes to the hatred that is spread through social media, the radicalisation that goes on through social media and the polarisation that is driven through social media. This is why I support the ban for under-16s. This is why I think this is important, despite the genuine challenges of its implementation.

I have seen the hate that is spread about different parts of our community and the vitriol that is directed towards the Jewish community. I have seen the antisemitic attacks that are directed online and how that drives hate and polarisation. I have seen this in my community and in other communities of other faiths and different backgrounds.

It is important that we regulate social media. It is important that we protect our children. And it is absolutely critical that we ask and, frankly, demand social media and digital firms to take responsibility for the harms that they facilitate through their platforms.

Even if they don't direct or create that content, it's certainly facilitated and exacerbated through the algorithms and the business models these businesses undertake. It is time to step up. I support this part of this legislation for what it does.

But, again, I come back to the point that it needs to go further. We need to have a digital duty of care that protects all Australians and protects, in particular, against the online hate, vitriol and extremism that we see on our online platforms today. Why do I welcome the bill?

Firstly, the bill expands the eSafety Commissioner's information-gathering powers. The existing section 63G is repealed and replaced with a broader provision allowing the commissioner to compel any relevant party—meaning not only platform providers—to produce information or documents relevant to compliance with the minimum-age obligation. This will capture the securing of evidence from third parties such as age-assurance providers and app store operators, something the commissioner has directly requested.

Entities that fail to comply face penalties of up to $1.65 million. This could include internal emails, implementation directions to company branches or board minutes—material that would allow the commissioner to properly assess whether reasonable steps are genuinely being taken, rather than relying solely on the limited monthly reporting that platforms choose to provide.

Secondly, the bill doubles the civil penalties under sections 63D, 63DA and 63DB, lifting the maximum penalty from 30,000 to 60,000 penalty units. That's from $49.5 million to $99 million. I support both these measures.

I do, however, hold reservations that even the double penalty represents sufficient financial disincentives for platforms at this scale. Once again, I outline that I remain concerned with how this regime will be enforced in practice and believe that the eSafety Commissioner may need greater resourcing to be able to make full use of these powers. There are other concerns I have with this bill.

The bill does not clearly define what constitutes 'reasonable steps'. There is a balance to be struck here. We want to encourage platforms to innovate in age-assurance technology while ensuring there is a clear, measurable standard the commissioner can rely on when bringing enforcement action once she has obtained the relevant documents.

Again, I'm not sure that we really have the incentives right yet to get these companies to innovate on age-assurance technology. There's a distance to go there. Perhaps, with changes around the world, that innovation will step up.

But I think not seeing this is going to be a continued weakness, and it is a concern I have in this space. There are also gaps that the bill does not address. Children can still view social media content without logging into an account at all.

Platforms like Roblox sit outside the current framework in ways that warrant greater scrutiny. I also remain concerned about generative AI chatbots, which can offer unfiltered advice to young people on their lives, their schoolwork and their mental health, with no safeguards in place. I've said that the government needs a clearer plan on how children are interacting with artificial intelligence, and that remains true today.

It is also worth remembering that these harms do not end at age 16. Those for whom the ban has been effective will log on for the first time as 17-year-olds with no transitional support. Adults, too, continue to experience real harm from these platforms.

This includes people in their 20s and 30s who are being radicalised online by extremists, terrorists and misogynistic content, as ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess shared in his annual threat assessment just last week. I have long advocated for greater transparency and stronger regulation of the algorithms that quietly determine what content we see and how much we are shown.

An opt-out system like Teach Us Consent's Fix Our Feeds initiative would put choice about what they see and when they see it back in the hands of every single Australian, and I do support that. But we need a broader framework: a digital duty of care that this parliament has been waiting for. The government has said it's forthcoming.

The government has been slow to the party. It has been in government for four years now. The online harms are not new and its not that they are not yet understood.

We are completely aware of them, and this legislation should have been in the parliament before now. Holding technology companies accountable for building safety into their platforms by design is desperately needed—for our children and for our adults. In conclusion, I am hopeful that this legislation will aid the work of protecting our young people from social media harms.

I recognise the challenges and imperfections of trying to do this work, but I still think it is worthy. I do support the government's actions and work in this space. But I urge the government to move more swiftly and decisively on not just a digital duty of care for our young people but also to combat extremism and to combat polarisation—and to keep our adults safe as well, including from online radicalisation.

I think that is absolutely critical. I still raise questions as to whether this is going to deliver what we want. I believe that we need to work out how to incentivise our social media companies to provide safe places—to provide safe types of social media.

If they are incentivised to innovate in that space, we may get better outcomes. I do hope that this sort of ban that is in place will help these platforms and others develop safer types of social media structures. I think we need to get there too, because otherwise we'll always be playing whac-a-mole.

I think we need to work out how to incentivise them. I hope that these laws help drive those companies to develop what we need, as well as help to just ban them outright among our 16-year-olds. I will continue to support this legislation, but we will have to see how it goes.

I think clear reporting on its success or not is absolutely critical if we are going to deal with online harms and manage the impact on our young people.