Anthony Alberinezi. Welcome to six News.
Thanks for having me on your wonderful program.
Well, good to have you here.
During the last election campaign, Anthony Albernizi sat down to do an interview with six News.
What will your party do differently this year compared to the last three elections that will see you form government. Well, what we've done is focus on much more of a narrative.
He praised the online news network run by then fourteen year old Leonardo PUGALIZI.
I commit to coming back on at semi regular intervals. It's I think is a fantastic initiative.
But now under the Alberzi government's own legislation, every child under sixteen, like Leo was then, will be blocked from using almost every social media platform, which the government says is for their own good. From Schwartz Media. I'm Daniel James. This is seven AM. The government's social media ban has been called inconsistent and ineffective. It doesn't name which platforms will be restricted, living it up to the Minister of the Day to decide what is and isn't a social
media platform. It also doesn't explain how tech companies will enforce the ban, just that they will face millions of dollars in penalties if they don't. Today an election reporter for six News, Maggie Perry, and what the band means for her and other young people across Australia. It's Friday, November twenty nine. Could you introduce yourself for us please?
Hi. I'm Maggie Perry.
I'm a trans election reporter for six News, or news organization mainally run by teenagers. I currently live in central Queensland and I'm just here to talk about the social media ban and how it would affect me and my colleagues.
We've got more results continuing to come in.
We'll go straight to our election reporter, Maye Perry, maybe talk us through what you've got. Let's go to a seed of mild Grave where our election graphics are prosing amazing election graphics. I am fifteen years old and I've been doing six News for about two years now. We're seeing a very interesting scenario where I'm going to say that legalized cannabis could even win best.
See it's so slish.
Legalized cannabis pat is Australian lump and labor all have a good shot.
And do you love it?
Yeah, I do. I do love it.
I haven't chegralized social media for your work and what you do at six News.
Well, it's incredibly integral. Our entire company, six News is run entirely on social media. We've been able to use it to interview Albert Easy and Scott Morrison and you know a lot of other notable politicians. And without social media, six news would just be completely the grounds fair would It would have never been able to form, and it would have never been able to prosper.
So given that, how will the band impact your work?
Well, for me, I would just be able to scrape in.
But you know, if this bill were are being implemented a year earlier, I would have been affected. I would have been forced off all of social media but I use except YouTube, which is exempt from a bell. All my Twitter accounts, my Discord accounts, Snapchat, Instagram, all of us would be deleted and I would lose contact to almost all my friends who I like to contact through
social media. And I would lose contact to all my followers and you know political friends and journalistic friends who are contact by Twitter, and you know, it would be incredibly harmful to me.
Most teenagers of course, aren't election journalists lock yourself, Maggie, And I'm followed by politicians on Twitter, so you've touched upon it there. But can you talk to me about what social media means for you personally, not the journalist, but you as a person.
You know, my social life in Central Queensland, I have a lot of friends, but you know, a lot of them aren't really in Central Queensland where in Sydney where I used to live, and so I've been able to keep in touch with them with social media and I've gained so many new friends through social media. It really is the only way I contact them. It's not like I have their phone number or any other way I
could contact them, but through social media. And I'm sure many kids around Australia also contacted a lot of their friends through social media. And I'm fine in my household were being trans but a lot of other kids aren't. Some of my friends in Sydney just can't be outed to their parents because if that were to happen, honestly, who knows, maybe you know, they'd be shunned by their
parents or worse. So they've only really had social media to be themselves and it has become a lifeline for clear kids who might not really have a home anywhere but the social media.
Let's get back to the band itself. Can you remember where you first heard about the idea of being floated?
I think it was Alberti's signing a non exactly well fought out petition to ban social media for under sixteen year olds.
This is terrific news.
You were one of the first people to encourage everybody to go to the petition and sign at thirty six months dot com dot au.
We thank you for your support, and.
It included a lot of social media like YouTube and a lot of educational things, so it clearly wasn't entirely fought out.
But this is about letting children have a childhood. There's nothing social about some social media taking our young Australians away from real friends and real experiences.
Some of my friends were thinking that a lot of people have body image issues because of the social media, and some people get harassed and it's not great for this whole confidence. I understand those viewpoints, but we can't exactly do something like a blanket band, which not only eliminates some of the negatives, but also eliminates all of the positives of social media for under sixteen year olds, and.
You've learned a number of employment skills from being on social media? Would that be a fair thing to say?
Definitely?
What is it torture? What are some of the skills you've picked up through it?
It's brought me a lot of things, just generally being able to navigate the Internet and knowing all the ins
and outs of it, especially even social media culture. I mean, I'm sure a lot of parties and companies are very familiar with the idea of hiring interns to run by social media accounts, and even that is quite a skill for young people who do have an advantage on that, and older generations will have been advantage of having grown up on social media all their lives and having these skills equipped ready at their hand, while younger people will suddenly be thrown into a world of social media and
they won't have the skills that people have been able to accumulate for more than a decade, and suddenly there'll be a gap between the older, more employable, technologically literate generations of you know, Millennials and some Gen Z and then a generation of younger people who are not as employable as for all the counterparts and people who have been equipped and weren't affected by this band.
So you're worried that this band is going to harm people.
Yeah, I think it can harm a lot of people.
Like thousands of kids would be left alone and disadvantaged and kind of stranded because a lot of them already use social media as their home, you know, somewhere they could connect with people. So when you cut that off from a lot of these kids, it'll be very shocking and very disruptive to their lives, especially if they don't have many friends in person, or are a better an outsider in back community or something.
Social media is just so vital.
Coming up after the break, How effective will the ban actually be?
For too many young astrains, social media can be harmful. Almost two thirds of fourteen to seventeen year old astrains have viewed extremely harmful content online, including drug abuse, suicide or self harm, as well as violent material.
Megan, let's talk about the government's rationale for their social media ban. Michelle Roland, the Communications Minister, said it will protect children from dangerous content and that the industry uses psychological manipulation. Do you agree that social media can push young people towards harmful content.
I think it can.
I think it's not exactly like a social media band would suddenly stop this, and I don't think it would incentivize companies to focus on harmbat algorithms are doing promoting that sort of content, even if it's a very real issue. Once again, a blanket band isn't exactly the best way to combat it. It's more maybe legislation on the idea of you know, the algorithms and what they're doing, you know, these dangerous algorithms about the government used as for some
of their main reasons for this band. I know, sometimes we'll get seminars about the dangers of the digital world, you know, maybe once every one or two years in primary school, but no one really pays attention to them. So I think the government needs to do something a bit more informative, a bit more engaging for a lot of these kids, so that they actually understand for process of social media and how to navigate it, you know, without just being thrown into it, which is what is
already happening. It's not exactly a bad thing, but education can't hurt Now.
It does seem to be a lot of support for this band, though there was a new South Wales government survey that showed eighty seven percent of respondents showed an interest in having an age requirement on social media of around sixteen years, So it's popular. What do you say to those sort of surveys and that amount of support.
Well, I think it's a popular idea, and I understand why. It's very easy to see the positives of such a ban. Its just not as easy to see the negatives, which I think there are some very very big, crucial negatives, and it kind of relies on people being informed about this bill and understanding some of the negatives about it. And I think a lot of people were to post a band if they had just learned about it a bit more so.
The social media platforms now have a year to comply with the legislation, But when it comes to enforcing the band, what's your understanding of how it's actually going to work.
Really it's still a bit up And yeah, it's really hard to understand because there's been a few conflicting messages about it. I know Anthony Chislm was saying something along the lines of people being required to show ida and then now Michelle Rowland is saying that people won't have to show IDA to companies, but there's been a lot
of genuine privacy concerns. It also causes issues with, you know, discouraging older people who might not be so technology literate from being able to access social media to connect with their loved ones or to read venues which social media
has become a huge part of. Also a lot of things like requiring companies to verify that users are in the country that their VPN says we are, which is very irrational and I don't think any corporation has the ability to monitor hundreds of millions or even billions of people's posts every second, evernment every day.
It's just not a very feasible thing to do.
So having said that, Maggie, how effective do you think the band will be?
It just really depends on how it will be enforced. People will always try to get into things, especially young people, to do things that they're not supposed to do. If it was requiring people to provide identification, I know robots has that for certain things, and there's still a lot of young people who get through these barriers by just seeing their parents' identification. I guess copycat or rival social media apps could be formed that function very similarly, and
I think that would happen under this scenario. Since you can't exactly keep track of every app that's uploaded to the plastor or the app store or Steam. A social media band might be effective in blocking young people from using Twitter or Instagram, But some things like YouTube and TikTok you can just access even without an account, and it really doesn't change much of your experience, and you'll
still be victim to these manipulative algorithms about Roland mentions. Ultimately, a band won't make much of a difference for some of these apps, no matter how much way you talk about it.
Maggie, thank you so much for your time and for your insights.
Thank you so much for having me.
You can read Maggie Perry's full piece and tomorrow's edition of the Saturday Paper. Also in the news today, Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham has announced he will retire from federal politics at the next election. Considered the key member of the opposition's front bench team, Senator Birmingham serves as the opposition's Foreign affairs spokesperson and the coalition's leader in the Senate and the Commonwealth government has apologized to Aboriginal people
in the Northern Territory for stolen wages. In September, the government reached a settlement for up to one hundred and eighty million dollars for up to ten thousand First Nations people who worked in the Northern Territory between nineteen thirty three and nineteen seventy two for little or no wages. The apology was delivered by Minister for an Indigenous Australian's Melanderry McCarthy in the Senate. Seven Am is a daily
show from Schwartz Media and The Saturday Paper. It's made by Atticus Bastow, Shane Anderson, Chris Dangate, Zoltenfetchow, Travis Evans, Sarah mcveee, Ruby Jones and myself Daniel James. We'll be back on Monday. Low on Money