When they ask about…TikTok

‘There is nothing new under the sun,’ lamented Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) in his eponymous work in the Tanach.

The school I attended in the 1970s urged parents to ban or limit us kids from watching television, the scourge of our day that would rot our emerging minds and expose us to material inappropriate for our age. A generation earlier, in the 1950s, it was the newly emerging mass-produced comics that were the subject of intense scrutiny, with the US Congress holding hearings into the connection between reading them and the rise of juvenile delinquency. When my friend worried about her kids playing video games, her mother recalled her own parents’ anxiety about radio serials.

Today it is social media.

A few weeks ago, the Australian federal parliament became the first legislature in the world to pass laws that place severe limits on social media usage by children under 16. Despite its contentious and ground-breaking nature, it was passed amid a rush of bills legislated by parliament on its last sitting day of the year.

These new laws, which only come into effect in 12 months, will place the onus on social media companies in Australia to take steps to accurately determine the age of their users and block children under 16. The lawmakers figure if these companies, with their complex algorithms, capacity to scan usage and mine data, can figure out how to target children with content and advertising, then they have the capacity to avoid them. The legislation also indirectly puts pressure on parents and schools to give it effect.