MELBOURNE, Australia — Australia’s communications minister introduced legislation in Parliament Thursday that would ban children under 16 from social media, saying online safety is one of parents’ biggest challenges.

Michelle Rowland said TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram are among the platforms that will face fines of up to $33 million for systemic failures to prevent younger children from having accounts.

“This bill seeks to establish a new normative value in society that access to social media is not the defining characteristic of growing up in Australia,” Rowland told Parliament.

“There is widespread recognition that something needs to be done immediately to prevent young teens and children from being exposed to endless streams of unfiltered content,” she added.

X owner Elon Musk warned that Australia plans to go further, posting on his platform: “Seems like a backdoor way to control internet access for all Australians.”

The bill has broad political support. Once it becomes law, platforms would have a year to figure out how to implement the age restriction.

“For too many young Australians, social media can be harmful,” Rowland said. “Nearly two-thirds of Australians aged 14 to 17 have seen highly harmful content online, including drug abuse, suicide or self-harm, and violent material. A quarter were exposed to content promoting unsafe eating habits.”

Government research has found 95 per cent of Australian carers consider online safety to be one of the “hardest challenges for parents”, she said. Social networks have a social responsibility and could do better in addressing harm on their platforms, she added.

“It’s about protecting young people, not punishing or isolating them, and letting parents know we’re in their corner when it comes to supporting their children’s health and well-being,” Rowland said.

Child protection and internet experts have raised concerns about the ban, including isolating 14- and 15-year-olds from their already established online social networks.

Rowland said no age restrictions would be imposed on messaging services, online games or platforms that substantially support the health and education of users.

“We are not saying that there are no risks in messaging apps or online games. While users may still be exposed to harmful content by other users, they don’t face the same algorithmic content curation and psychological manipulation to encourage near-endless engagement,” she said.

The government announced last week that a consortium led by British company Age Check Certification Scheme had been contracted to examine various age estimation and verification technologies.

As well as removing children under 16 from social media, Australia is also looking at ways to prevent children under 18 from accessing pornography online, a government statement said.

Tony Allen, chief executive of the Age Check Certification Scheme, said on Monday that the technologies being considered included age estimation and age inference. Inference involves establishing a series of facts about individuals that indicate that they are at least a certain age.

Rowland said the platforms would also face fines of up to $33 million if they misused personal user information obtained for age verification purposes.

Information used to provide age must be destroyed after it has served that purpose, unless the user consents to it being retained, she said.

Digital Industry Group Inc., an Australian digital industry advocate, said with Parliament set to vote on the bill next week, there may not be time for “meaningful consultation on the details of the unprecedented legislation globally”. .