robs young people of connection<\/a> – particularly those from LGBTQ+, neurodivergent or rural communities – and will leave them less equipped to tackle the realities of life on the web.<\/p>\nBut the policy is wildly popular with parents and has won the support of people like Oprah, and Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex.<\/p>\n
In a statement on their website, the pair lauded the “bold” action from Australia but said “it shouldn’t have come to this”.<\/p>\n
“We hope this ban is only the start of a reckoning between society and the tech companies that built these platforms with growth as their first principle instead of safety.”<\/p>\n
Various governments, from the US state of Florida to the European Union, have been experimenting with limiting children’s use of social media. But, along with a higher age limit of 16, Australia is the first jurisdiction to deny an exemption for parental approval in a policy like this – making its laws the world’s strictest.<\/p>\n
Reddit said the law forces “intrusive and potentially insecure verification processes on adults as well as minors”, isolates teens engaging in “age-appropriate community experiences” and creates an “illogical patchwork of which platforms are included and which aren’t”.<\/p>\n
“There are more targeted, privacy-preserving measures to protect young people online without resorting to blanket bans.”<\/p>\n
The case is not “an attempt to avoid compliance” or “an effort to retain young users for business reasons”, it added.<\/p>\n
“Unlike other platforms included under this law, the vast majority of Redditors are adults, we don’t market or target advertising to children under 18,” it said.<\/p>\n
The other platforms affected by the ban include Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Experts fear kids are going to circumvent the ban with relative ease – either by tricking the technology…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-311421","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}