Audio Excerpt - News Host (6 News):

“Anthony Albanese, welcome to 6 News.”

Audio Excerpt - Anthony Albanese:

“Thanks for having me on your wonderful program!”

Audio Excerpt - News Host (6 News):

“Well, good to have you here.”

DANIEL:

During the last election campaign, Anthony Albanese sat down to do an interview with 6 News.

Audio Excerpt - News Host (6 News):

“What will your party do differently this year compared to the last three elections that will see you form government?”

Audio Excerpt - Anthony Albanese:

“Well, what we have done is focus on much more of a narrative.”

DANIEL:

He praised the online news network, run by then 14-year-old Leonardo Puglisi.

Audio Excerpt - Anthony Albanese:

“I commit to coming back on, at semi regular intervals. I think it's a fantastic initiative.”

DANIEL:

But now, under the Albanese government’s own legislation, every child under 16, like Leo was then, will be blocked from using almost every social media platform, which the government says is for their own good.

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DANIEL:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Daniel James. This is 7am.

The government’s social media ban has been called inconsistent and ineffective.

It doesn’t name which platforms will be restricted, leaving it up to the minister of the day to decide what is and isn’t a social media platform.

It also doesn’t explain how tech companies will enforce the ban, just that they will face millions of dollars in penalties if they don’t.

Today, election reporter for 6 News Maggie Perry, on what the ban means for her and other young people across Australia.

It’s Friday, November 2.

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DANIEL:

Could you introduce yourself for us, please?

MAGGIE:

Hi, I'm Maggie Perry. I'm a trans election reporter for 6 News, a news organisation mainly run by teenagers. I currently live in central Queensland and I'm just here to talk about the social media ban and how it would affect me and my colleagues.

Audio Excerpt - News Host (6 News):

“We’ve got more results continuing to come in, we’ll go straight to our election reporter Maggie Perry. Maggie, talk us through what you’ve got.”

Audio Excerpt - Maggie Perry:

“Let’s go to the seat of Mulgrave, with our election graphics, our pristine amazing election graphics.”

MAGGIE:

I am 15 years old and I've been doing 6 News for about two years now.

Audio Excerpt - Maggie Perry:

“We’re seeing a very interesting scenario where I’m gonna say that Legalise Cannabis could even win this seat. It’s so split. Legalise Cannabis, Katter’s Australian, LNP and Labor all have a good shot.”

DANIEL:

And do you love it?

MAGGIE:

Yeah I do. I do love it.

DANIEL:

How integral is social media for your work and what you do at 6 News?

MAGGIE:

It's incredibly integral. Our entire company, 6 News run entirely on social media. We've being able to use that to interview Albanese and Scott Morrison and, you know, a lot of other notable politicians. And without social media, 6 News would just be completely in the ground. There would... it would have never been able to form and it would have never been able to prosper.

DANIEL:

So given that, how will the ban impact your work?

MAGGIE:

Well, for me, I would just be able to scrape in. But, you know, if this bill would have been implemented a year earlier, I would have been affected, I would have been forced off of all the social media that I use except YouTube, which is exempt from a bill. All my Twitter accounts, my Discord accounts, Snapchat, Instagram, all of those would be deleted and I would lose contact to almost all my friends who I like to contact through social media. And I would lose contact to all my followers and, you know, political friends and journalistic friends who I contact via Twitter and, you know, it would be incredibly harmful to me.

DANIEL:

Yeah, most teenagers, of course, aren't election journalists like yourself, Maggie, and aren’t followed by politicians on Twitter. So you've touched upon it there but can you talk to me about what social media means for you personally? Not the journalist, but you as a person.

MAGGIE:

You know, my social life in central Queensland, I have a lot of friends but, you know, a lot of them really in central Queensland, they’re in Sydney where I used to live, and so I've been able to keep in touch with them with social media and I've gained so many new friends for social media. It really is the only way I contact them. It's not like I have their phone number or any other way I could contact them but through social media. And I'm sure many kids around Australia also contact a lot of their friends through social media, and I'm fine in my household with being trans, but a lot of other kids aren't. Some of my friends in Sydney just can't be outed to their parents because if that were to happen, honestly, who knows? Maybe, you know, they'd be shunned by their parents or worse. And so they've only really had social media to be themselves. And it has become a lifeline for queer kids who might not really have a home anywhere but social media.

DANIEL:

Let's get back to the ban itself. Can you remember where you first heard about the idea being floated?

MAGGIE:

I think it was Albanese's signing a not exactly well thought out petition to ban social media for under 16 year olds.

Audio Excerpt - Radio Host (Nova):

“This is terrific news. You were one of the first people to encourage everybody to go to the petition and sign at 36months.com.au. We thank you for your support.”

MAGGIE:

And it included a lot of social media like YouTube and a lot of educational things. So it clearly wasn't entirely thought out.

Audio Excerpt - Anthony Albanese:

“This is about letting children have a childhood. There's nothing social about some social media taking our young Australians away from real friends and real experiences.”

MAGGIE:

Some of my friends were thinking that a lot of people have body image issues because of the social media and some people get harassed and it's not great for self-confidence. I understand those viewpoints, but we can't exactly do something like a blanket ban, which not only eliminates some of the negatives, but also eliminates all of the positives of social media for under 16 year olds.

DANIEL:

And you've learned a number of employment skills from being on social media. Would that be a fair thing to say?

MAGGIE:

Definitely.

DANIEL:

What has it taught you? What are some of the skills you've picked up through it?

MAGGIE:

It's taught me a lot of things, just generally being able to navigate the Internet and knowing all the ins and outs of it, especially even social media culture. I mean, I'm sure a lot of parties and companies are very familiar with the idea of hiring interns to run their social media accounts. And even that is quite a skill for young people who do have an advantage on that. And older generations will have the advantage of having grown up on social media all their lives and having these skills equipped, ready at their hand, while younger people will suddenly be thrown into a world of social media and they won't have the skills that people have been able to accumulate for more than a decade, and suddenly there'll be a gap between the older, more employable, technologically literate generations of millennials and some Gen Z, and then a generation of younger people who are not as employable as their older counterparts than people who have been equipped and weren't affected by this ban.

DANIEL:

So you're worried that this ban is going to harm people?

MAGGIE:

Yeah, I think it can harm a lot of people. Like thousands of kids would be left alone and disadvantaged and kind of stranded because a lot of them already use social media as their home. You know, somewhere they could connect with people. So when you cut that off from a lot of these kids, it'll be very shocking and very disruptive to their lives, especially if they don't have many friends in person or are a bit of an outsider in their community or something. Social media is just so vital.

DANIEL:

Coming up after the break, how effective will the ban actually be?

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Audio Excerpt - Michelle Rowland:

“For too many young Australians, social media can be harmful. Almost two thirds of 14 to 17 year old Australians have viewed extremely harmful content online, including drug abuse, suicide or self-harm, as well as violent material.”

DANIEL:

Maggie, let's talk about the government's rationale for their social media ban. Michelle Rowland, the Communications Minister, said it will protect children from dangerous content and that the industry uses psychological manipulation. Do you agree that social media can push young people towards harmful content?

MAGGIE:

I think it can. I think it's not exactly like a social media ban would suddenly stop this, and I don't think it would incentivise companies to focus on the harm that algorithms are doing, promoting that sort of content. Even if it's a very real issue, once again, a blanket ban isn't exactly the best way to combat it. It's more maybe legislation on the idea of, you know, the algorithms and what they're doing. You know, these dangerous algorithms that the government use as some of their main reasons for this ban. I know sometimes we'll get seminars about the dangers of the digital world, you know, maybe once every 1 or 2 years in primary school. But no one really pays attention to them. So I think the government needs to do something a bit more informative, a bit more engaging for a lot of these kids so that they actually understand the process of social media and how to navigate it, you know, without just being thrown into it, which is what is already happening. It's not exactly a bad thing, but education can't hurt.

DANIEL:

Now, there does seem to be a lot of support for this ban though. There was a New South Wales Government survey that showed 87% of respondents showed an interest in having an age requirement on social media of around 16 years. So it's popular. What do you say to those sort of surveys and that amount of support?

MAGGIE:

Well, I think it's a popular idea and I understand why. It's very easy to see the positives of such a ban, it's just not as easy to see the negatives, which I think there are some very, very big crucial negatives. And it kind of relies on people being informed about this bill and understanding some of the negatives about it. And I think a lot of people would oppose a ban if they, you know, had just learned about it a bit more.

DANIEL:

So the social media platforms now have a year to comply with the legislation. But when it comes to enforcing the ban, what's your understanding of how it's actually going to work?

MAGGIE:

Really, it's still a bit up in the air. It's fairly hard to understand because there's been a few conflicting messages about it. I know Anthony Chisholm was saying something along the lines of people being required to show ID and then now, Michelle Rowland is saying that people won't have to show ID to companies. But there's been a lot of genuine privacy concerns. It also causes issues with, you know, discouraging older people who might not be so technology literate from being able to access social media to connect with their loved ones or to read the news, which social media has become a huge part of. Also, a lot of things like requiring companies to verify that users are in the country that their VPN says they are, which is very irrational and I don't think any corporation has the ability to monitor hundreds of millions or even billions of people's posts every second, every minute, every day. It's just not a very feasible thing to do.

DANIEL:

So having said that Maggie, how effective do you think the ban will be?

MAGGIE:

It just really depends on how it will be enforced. People will always try to get into things, especially young people, to do things that they're not supposed to do. If it was requiring people to provide identification, I know Roblox does that for certain things and there's still a lot of young people who get through these barriers by just taking their parents identification. I guess copycat or rival social media apps could be formed that function very similarly and I think that would happen under this scenario, since you can't exactly keep track of every app that's uploaded to the play store or that app store or steam.

A social media ban might be effective in blocking young people from using Twitter or Instagram but some things like YouTube and TikTok, you can just access even without an account and it really doesn't change much of your experience and you'll still be victim to these, you know, manipulative algorithms that Rowland mentions. Ultimately, a ban won't make much of a difference for some of these apps, no matter how much they talk about it.

DANIEL:

Maggie, thank you so much for your time and for your insights.

MAGGIE:

Thank you so much for having me.

DANIEL:

You can read Maggie Perry’s full piece in tomorrow’s edition of The Saturday Paper.

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DANIEL:

Also in the news today...

Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham has announced he will retire from federal politics at the next election.

Considered a key member of the Opposition’s front bench team, Senator Birmingham serves as the opposition’s foreign affairs spokesperson and the Coalition's leader in the senate.

And,

The Commonwealth Government has apologised to Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory for Stolen Wages.

In September, the government reached a settlement for up to $180 million dollars for up to 10,000 First Nations people who worked in the Northern Territory between 1933 and 1972 for little or no wages.

The apology was delivered by Minister for Indigenous Australians Malarndirri McCarthy in the senate.

7am is a daily show from Schwartz Media and The Saturday Paper.

It’s made by Atticus Bastow, Cheyne Anderson, Chris Dengate, Zoltan Fesco, Travis Evans, Sarah McVeigh, Ruby Jones and myself, Daniel James.

We’ll be back on Monday.

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