Meta has shared its feedback on the South Australian Children (Social Media Safety) Bill 2024 as part of the SA Government’s consultation process
The bill seeks to protect children from the harms of social media. It proposes restricting access to social media for children under the age of 14 and introducing parental controls for children aged 14 and 15 to protect them from these harms.
The parent company of Instagram and Facebook is building on its engagement with Hon Robert French AC in the consultation process to prepare the Report of the Independent Legal Examination into Banning Children’s Access to Social Media.
In its submission, the tech giant said, “Meta shares the South Australian Government’s objective that young people should have an age-appropriate experience online.
“This is why we invest significantly in policies, technology and partnerships to promote a safer online experience for all of the people who use our services and especially young people.”
Meta said: “We have steadily increased our investment over the years and now have around 40,000 people overall working on safety and security and have invested over US$20 billion since 2016. This includes around US$5 billion in the last year alone.”
The tech giant has also continued to expand its proactive detection technologies to identify and action problematic content. It said that its proactive rate against content such as terrorism, child exploitation, or suicide and self-injury is over 95%, according to Meta’s Transparency Centre Q2 report.
“The privacy, safety, and wellbeing of young people on our platforms is essential to our business. Our policies prohibit problematic content, including content or behaviour that exploits young people, and we work closely with experts in mental health, child development, digital literacy and more to build features and tools so that teens can connect online safely and responsibly.”
Meta said they are committed to investing in the privacy, safety and security space. “Ensuring that young people receive age-appropriate experiences is a responsibility we take seriously.”
The platform said that its approach is guided by three principles: responsible empowerment of young people, age-appropriate safeguards for younger users and innovative technologies to provide age-appropriate experiences.
Meta added: “We want to be clear that we are not recommending this approach in order to divest Meta of our responsibility to ensure safe and age appropriate experiences for teens across our services – a narrative that has gained momentum in some circles but is very much misguided. We make this recommendation based on our long experience in building online safety into our products and services.”
Meta also said that it has also made suggestions to the SA Government to highlight where the drafting appears to lead to unintended negative consequences.
“To illustrate this point with a local example, at present, under the current language proposed, an app provider could potentially be liable if a 13 year-old viewed the well-known video of a tour with the Calypso Star Charters11 that was originally posted on their Facebook Page and was shared by a family member in a family group chat.
“It is challenging to see how restricting young people from enjoying the small business entrepreneurship and beauty of South Australia in this way, which social media enables, is within the intended scope of the Bill.”