VIENNA: Austria on Thursday (Mar 26) introduced it’ll quickly ban social media for kids as much as the age of 14, saying it spawned dependancy, glorified violence, unfold misinformation and set unrealistic magnificence requirements.
“It’s virtually unimaginable for fogeys to manage their kids’s consumption” on these platforms, that are designed to make them “intentionally dependent”, Vice-Chancellor Andreas Babler advised a press convention.
The nation of 9.2 million hopes to have the ability to current the brand new legislation “as early as this summer time” so it could possibly enter into power “as shortly as potential”, he mentioned.
Babler mentioned Austria will goal platforms utilizing “algorithms that create dependancy, generate earnings and have dangerous results”.
Babler mentioned kids have been “left to their very own gadgets in a world the place they’re confronted, for instance, with unrealistic magnificence beliefs, the glorification of violence, disinformation, and the place they’re additionally manipulated”.
However he mentioned there was nonetheless no consensus among the many three events within the ruling coalition concerning the verification methodology that might be put in place.
A 3-week “no cell phone” experiment, led by the training ministry and involving 72,000 pupils and their households, has simply led to Austria.
“The suggestions we now have is that this has been a type of withdrawal expertise for the pupils and that they’re conscious of the dangerous results of their extreme consumption,” Training Minister Christoph Wiederkehr advised the information convention.
Along with the ban itself, the Austrian authorities plans to introduce a brand new obligatory topic in colleges referred to as “Media and Democracy,” meant to assist pupils distinguish fact from falsehood and recognise anti-democratic makes an attempt at affect.
The far-right FPÖ get together, which got here first within the 2024 legislative elections with out managing to kind a authorities, denounced the transfer as a “frontal assault on freedom of expression”.
“Now that vital voices, different media and patriotic forces are gaining attain on social networks, they immediately wish to impose bans and censorship measures,” FPÖ MP Katayun Pracher-Hilander mentioned.
