{"id":30339,"date":"2024-11-30T14:16:29","date_gmt":"2024-11-30T14:16:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/?p=30339"},"modified":"2024-11-30T14:16:29","modified_gmt":"2024-11-30T14:16:29","slug":"nsw-government-welcomes-social-media-ban-for-children-under-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2024\/11\/30\/nsw-government-welcomes-social-media-ban-for-children-under-16\/","title":{"rendered":"NSW Government welcomes social media ban for children under 16"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The NSW Government welcomes the Federal Government\u2019s ban on social media for children under 16.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The<em>&nbsp;Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024<\/em>&nbsp;passed both houses of Parliament this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The laws place the onus on social media platforms \u2013 not young people or their parents \u2013 to take reasonable steps to prevent Australians under 16 years of age from having accounts, and ensures systemic breaches will see platforms face fines of up to $49.5 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The minimum age will apply to \u2018age-restricted social media platforms\u2019 as defined in the Bill, which includes Snapchat, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, X and others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Minns Labor Government is pleased that we have a national approach to social media bans. It means we have consistent rules across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This follows the joint social media summit held by the NSW Government and the Government of South Australia &#8211; the first of its kind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Summit in Sydney reached consensus that social media, if left unchecked, uncensored, un-supervised, poses a threat, particularly to young people in our community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Evidence shows us the links between increases in social media use and greater instances of mental health issues, loss of sleep, less in person interaction, and less practice of social skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The social media ban is a welcome measure for many parents, and another of the many measures now in place to help minimise the negative impacts of social media and devices on young people including:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Banning mobile phones in all NSW Public schools, with a recent survey showing that 86 per cent of principals believing socialising has improved since this came into effect.<\/li><li>Developing a statewide approach to address bullying in New South Wales schools.<\/li><li>A $2.5 million research fund to investigate the impacts of excessive screen time, video games and mobile phone use on young people and their learning.<\/li><li>Recruiting 250 additional school counsellors as part of the NSW Labor Government&#8217;s election commitment to student wellbeing.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Premier of NSW Chris Minns said:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI want to congratulate the Albanese Government on passing these laws. They are world leading.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve said before, social media is this giant global unregulated experiment on children, and we have to change that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe parents I speak to and certainly the evidence acknowledges that social media is doing an enormous amount of harm to young people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBy making this law, at the very least we empower parents to be able to say no to their kids when it comes to social media because it\u2019s now against the law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt also means kids can focus on being kids, talking to each other face to face, spending time outdoors and not fixated on their screens.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The NSW Government welcomes the Federal Government\u2019s ban on social media for children under 16. The&nbsp;Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024&nbsp;passed both houses of Parliament this week. The laws place the onus on social media platforms \u2013 not young people or their parents \u2013 to take reasonable steps to prevent Australians under &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2024\/11\/30\/nsw-government-welcomes-social-media-ban-for-children-under-16\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;NSW Government welcomes social media ban for children under 16&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nswnews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30339"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30340,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30339\/revisions\/30340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}