Australia's parliament has approved a law banning social media access for minors under 16, aiming to protect youth from online harms. The law, effective in a year, holds platforms accountable for enforcing age restrictions, with fines for non-compliance. The move has sparked debate over its implications for free expression and enforcement challenges.
The law was passed amid growing concerns about the impact of social media on youth mental health. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese emphasized the need for reform to safeguard children, reflecting a global trend towards stricter regulations on tech companies regarding child safety.
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Australia, officially known as the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands.
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Facebook is an American online social media and social networking service based in Menlo Park, California and a flagship service of the namesake company Facebook, Inc.
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Instagram is an American photo and video sharing social networking service owned by Facebook, created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger and originally launched on iOS in October 2010.
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Snapchat is an American multimedia messaging app developed by Snap Inc., originally Snapchat Inc. One of the principal features of Snapchat is that pictures and messages are usually only available for a short time before they become inaccessible to their
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TikTok/Douyin is a Chinese video-sharing social networking service owned by ByteDance, a Beijing-based Internet technology company founded in 2012 by Zhang Yiming.
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Reddit is an American social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website.
Registered members submit content to the site such as links, text posts, and images, which are then voted up or down by other members.
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country located off the northwestern coast of the European mainland.
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Facebook, Inc. is an American social media conglomerate corporation based in Menlo Park, California. It was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, along with his fellow roommates and students at Harvard College, who were Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country consisting of metropolitan France in Western Europe and several overseas regions and territories.
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The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is a regulatory commission of the Australian Government, under the Treasury.
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Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe whose mainland territory comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula; Mainland Norway and the remote island of Jan Mayen as well as the archi
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James Pearson Steyer is an American children's advocate, civil rights attorney, professor and author. He founded Common Sense Media, a lobbying and advocacy organization that provides age-based ratings and reviews of various forms of media aimed at parent
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YouTube is an American online video-sharing platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. Three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim—created the service in February 2005.