Australian states back national plan to ban children younger than 16 from social media

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Australia’s states and territories on Friday unanimously backed a national plan to require most forms of social media to bar children younger than 16.

Leaders of the eight provinces held a virtual meeting with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to discuss what he calls a world-first national approach that would make platforms including X, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook responsible for enforcing the age limit.

“Social media is doing social harm to our young Australians,” Albanese told reporters. “The safety and mental health of our young people has to be a priority."

The government leaders had been discussing for months setting a limit, considering options from 14 to 16 years of age.

While Tasmania would have preferred 14, the state was prepared to support 16 in the interests of achieving national uniformity, Albanese said.

The legislation will be introduced into Parliament within two weeks, and the age ban would take effect a year after it passes into law, giving platforms time to work out how to exclude children. The government has yet to offer a technical solution.

The delay is also intended to allow time to address privacy concerns around age verification.

The main opposition party has given in-principle support to the 16-year age limit since it was announced on Thursday, suggesting the legislation will pass the Senate.

The minor Greens party was critical, saying the ban would prevent the emergence in Australia of future child environmental activists like Sweden's Greta Thunberg.

More than 140 academics with expertise in fields related to technology and child welfare signed an open letter to Albanese last month opposing a social media age limit as “too blunt an instrument to address risks effectively.”

Critics say most teenagers are tech savvy enough to get around such laws. Some fear the ban will create conflicts within families and drive social media problems underground.

Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, argues that stronger tools in app stores and operating systems for parents to control what apps their children can use would be a “simple and effective solution.”

The government likens the proposed social media age limit to the laws that restrict the sale of alcohol to adults aged 18 and older across Australia. Children still find ways to drink, but the prohibition remains.

“We think these laws will make a real positive difference,” Albanese said.

But Lisa Given, professor of information sciences at RMIT University, described the legislation as “really problematic.”

“Many of our social networks are actually about the provision of extremely critical information to kids,” Given told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

“There’s no doubt that they’re also facing bullying and other challenges online, but they actually need the social supports to know how to navigate the platforms safely and so they need more support from parents, from care-givers, not less access to a single or multiple platforms,” Given added.

Tama Leaver, professor of internet studies at Curtin University, described the government’s plan to remove 14 and 15-year-olds from their already established social media accounts was “strange.”

“If you’ve already developed that space in that world, to have it taken away really could do as much harm as the harms that are purportedly being fixed,” Leaver said.

“There are so many questions about this that have yet to be answered, but even if we had solid answers about how this might work technically and how this might get implemented socially, it's still hard to believe that this would actually keep kids safe online," he added.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said children would retain access to online education and health services.

The legislation would also include strong privacy protections surrounding age verification.

“Privacy must be paramount, including that of children,” Rowland said. “We should also be very clear about the realities. These platforms know about their users in a way that no one else does.”

Rowland said YouTube would likely be included among the mainstream platforms defined under the legislation as age restricted services.

But YouTube Kids could be exempted. Gaming and messaging services would not face age restrictions, she said,

“This legislation would strike a balance between minimizing the harms experienced by young people during a critical period of their development while also supporting their access to benefits as well,” Rowland said.

A teenage girl uses her phone to access social media in Sydney, Friday, Nov. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

A teenage boy uses his phone in Sydney, Friday, Nov. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

A teenage girl uses her phone in Sydney, Friday, Nov. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

A school girl holds her phone while crossing a street in Sydney, Friday, Nov. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

A young girl uses her phone while sitting on a bench in Sydney, Friday, Nov. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

14-year-old Henry, right, and Angel, 15, use their phones to view social media in Sydney, Friday, Nov. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street's weak end to last year appears to be carrying into 2025, and U.S. stock indexes are slipping on Thursday.

The S&P 500 was down 0.5% in Thursday afternoon trading and on track to extend the four-day losing streak that dimmed the close of its stellar 2024. The main gauge of Wall Street’s health lost a gain of 0.9% from early in the morning and is heading toward its longest losing streak since April.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 223 points, or 0.5%, as of 2:30 p.m. Eastern time, after an early gain of 360 points disappeared. The Nasdaq composite was 0.6% lower.

Tesla helped drag the market lower after disclosing it delivered fewer vehicles in the last three months of 2024 than analysts expected. The electric-vehicle company’s stock slumped 6.7%.

Tesla was one of the big winners of 2024, particularly after Donald Trump’s Election Day victory raised speculation that Elon Musk’s close relationship with the president-elect could help the company. But critics have been warning that prices across the stock market have run too high, too quickly and are at risk of a pullback.

Consider a measure tracked by Bank of America of how heavily Wall Street analysts are recommending stocks, which recently hit its highest level since early 2022, according to strategist Savita Subramanian. She says the measure has been a reliable contrarian indicator in the past, and it’s only a bit shy of triggering a signal to sell for those who are leery when much of Wall Street herds in the same direction.

Elsewhere on Wall Street, H.B. Fuller sank 7.4% after the seller of adhesives, sealants and other specialty chemical products said it’s recently seen a slowdown in sales to a number of its customer categories.

On the winning side of Wall Street were companies tied to the energy industry after prices rose for crude oil and natural gas.

Constellation Energy jumped 6.2% for the biggest gain in the S&P 500 after announcing it won more than $1 billion in combined contracts with the U.S. General Services Administration to supply power and perform energy savings and conservation measures.

Some Big Tech stocks also helped limit the market's losses. Nvidia, whose chips are powering the world’s move into artificial-intelligence technology, rose 2.1% after following up its nearly 240% surge in 2023 with a better than 170% jump last year.

Some investors and analysts are counting on the AI rush to continue, even though critics say it’s made stock prices too expensive. As the calendar flips to a new year, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives says it’s the ”same tech playbook in year 3 of this tech AI driven bull market,” for example.

Some pages of the playbook do seem to be changing. Investors have ratcheted back expectations for how many cuts to interest rates the Federal Reserve may deliver in 2025, for example.

The economy has held up remarkably well despite the high rates brought by the Fed in recent years to stifle inflation. But inflation has recently appeared to become more resistant to slowing the last bit to the Fed's 2% target, and Trump's pushing for tariffs and other policies have raised worries about potentially more upward pressure on prices.

That pushed the Fed to say recently it will likely deliver fewer of the economy-juicing cuts to interest rates in 2025 than it had earlier thought.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury held at 4.57%, where it was late Tuesday, after a report said fewer U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week than economists expected. It’s the latest signal that the job market remains solid.

In stock markets abroad, indexes fell 2.2% in Hong Kong and 2.7% in Shanghai after a survey of factory managers showed Chinese activity expanding at a slower pace in December. New orders, employment and business sentiment weakened.

Upbeat talk by Chinese leader Xi Jinping in a New Year’s address did little to raise optimism among investors who are hoping for more aggressive action to support the world’s second-largest economy and boost stock prices.

“We have adopted a full range of policies to make solid gains in pursuing high-quality development. China’s economy has rebounded and is on an upward trajectory,” Xi said in a New Year message, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

Stock indexes were mostly higher in Europe, while Japan's market remained closed.

AP Business Writer Yuri Kageyama contributed.

FILE - The New York Stock Exchange is shown in New York's Financial District on Dec. 31, 2024. American flags flew at half-staff there following the death of former U.S. president Jimmy Carter. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)

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