Responding to proposed legislation to ban under-16s from social media, ACT Leader David Seymour says:

"ACT shares the concern of many parents, teachers and experts: social media is doing enormous harm to young people. We also know what H.L. Menken meant in saying: For every problem there is a solution that is simple, neat—and wrong.

"ACT opposes National’s bill banning under-16s from social media because it is not workable. Instead, we ask the Education and Workforce Committee to hold an open, transparent inquiry. The inquiry should hear all voices to find a workable solution that respects parental responsibility.

"ACT is concerned about the practicalities of a ban. For example, requiring all social media users to provide government identification to social media companies would raise privacy issues.

"The Bill’s definition of ‘social media’ more or less includes the entire internet, for example the Bill says social media could be anything that ‘allow[s] end-users to link to, or interact with, some or all of the other end users.’ Such a poorly drafted definition is unworkable.

"Similar legislation has been passed in Australia, but hasn’t come into effect yet, and no-one yet knows how the ban will be implemented. We would be better to learn from the Aussies’ mistakes than make the same mistakes at the same time as them."

© Scoop Media