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A ban on social networks for children under 14 or 16: the objective set by the Australian Prime Minister on Tuesday is similar to that of other Western countries committed to the same path, without any obvious technical solution so far.
Why do some countries want a ban?
According to Olivier Ertzscheid, lecturer in information and communication sciences at the French University of Nantes, “two major explanatory keys” exist.
He points to an “evolution of knowledge” of social networks and their economic model which is based on capturing attention: “We now know that behind this, there are algorithms and, above all, monetization strategies that pose public health problems.“.
Regarding conservative governments, the academic also highlights an “intrinsic fear of youth movements”, linked to their “power” and their “capacity to mobilize en masse”, which can lead to a desire for control.
Which countries have banned young people from social media?
“There is no democracy today that has the technical and legal tools and laws that would allow it to prohibit access by an age group to a media, a social network or other.“, notes Olivier Ertzscheid.
In Australia and the United Kingdom, statements in favour of a ban have not yet been translated into law.
In Florida, a law prohibiting under-14s from opening accounts and requiring parental consent for teenagers aged 14 and 15 is set to go into effect in January 2025. Spain also passed a law in June banning under-16s from accessing social media. But in both cases, the method of age verification has not yet been determined.
In France, a law passed in June 2023 introduced a “digital majority” at 15 years old, but this has not yet come into force, pending a response from the European Commission on its compliance with European law. The country has also been experimenting since the start of the 2024 school year with a “digital break” in some 180 schools, requiring 50,000 middle school students (aged 11 to 15) to hand over their mobile phones upon arrival.
The case of “totalitarian countries” offers rare examples of effective bans because the Internet is tightly controlled by the state.
China, which has had access restriction measures for minors since 2021, requires identification via an identity document. Children under 14 cannot spend more than 40 minutes per day on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, and children and adolescents have limited online gaming time.
What are the difficulties of such a ban?
For Olivier Ertzscheid, the implementation of these measures essentially raises problems of compatibility between law and technology.
“Legally, this already exists: when you register on a platform, you are asked for your age.“, he emphasizes. But, to establish effective control, “we are forced to open a breach in the area of respect for privacy“, the teacher believes.
Some applications, such as the French social network Yubo, use the British company Yoti, which has developed an age assessment system based on a photo, based on artificial intelligence. But the deployment of these tools remains rare because, beyond their technical aspects, they must comply with legal requirements.
Guarantor of the rights of the French, the National Commission for Information Technology and Civil Liberties (CNIL) thus points out that age control leads to “to collect personal data and poses privacy risks“.
In accordance with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), tools such as facial recognition also see their use very limited.
Regarding “trusted third parties”, which would allow the age of a user to be authenticated without communicating their identity to the social network, “more and more public and private funding is being committed to this type of solution“, notes the researcher.