Ban on teen social media will remove connections for those in marginalised communities - queer activist

• Banning social media for under-16s in New Zealand will remove connections for those in marginalised communities, a queer activist says.
• However, introducing the ban here would help combat harm towards children, a child safety advocate says.
• NetSafe figures show an 88 percent rise in complaints about sextortion since 2019.

A ban on social media for under-16s will remove connections for those in marginalised communities and prevent them from learning about the world, a queer activist says.

It follows Australia introducing a ban on platforms such as TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat this week.

New Zealand has no plans for a ban, although Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told the New Zealand Herald in September he was "up for looking at all of that", while Labour leader Chris Hipkins said he was open to looking at a similar approach in New Zealand, provided there was evidence it would make a difference.

Australia's ban will not take effect for a year as consultation about how it will work has to happen with social media companies.

Shaneel Lal was 14 when they started using social media. Lal said that helped to inform them about the world and create change, through advocating to ban conversion therapy.

"It certainly helped me form my view of politicians and politics, and I think that young people should have as many resources available to them to not only be informed but also to hold the government accountable further."

They said it was also a place where young people - particularly those who were queer and indigenous - could find their community.

"I grew up in a very conservative community that did not encourage young people, particularly young brown queer immigrants to have a voice. Social media allowed me to find my voice.

"I think about the movement to ban conversion therapy, it only really took off because there was so much support amongst young New Zealanders who rallied around it."

Lal is also no stranger to harassment on social media, but despite some of the aggressive bullying they endured, they said they still disagreed with the ban.

"I deleted Twitter, but what I found is that getting rid of social media or taking away young people's rights to use social media is essentially victim blaming.

"If there are bullies on the internet, if there are people harassing people on the internet, you try to get effective policies to get rid of those people from using social media or to get rid of that behaviour, you do not go and tell people who are being bullied remove yourself from this place.

"A lot of people who were sharing that material and promoting the hīkoi were young people. So social media is playing a very valuable role in honouring constitutional fabric of our society. It is helping young people be connected, share that material, ensure that all other New Zealanders are as well aware."

Police and NetSafe have both seen rising cases of sextortion reported to them over the years with children as young as 10 targeted.

NetSafe chief online safety officer Sean Lyons previously told RNZ it had seen an 88 percent rise in complaints since 2019.

Police receive about 10 reports of sextortion a week, but said the crime was largely unreported.

Child safety advocate Holly Brooker said social media had been largely unregulated in New Zealand for more than 20 years, which had a negative impact on children.

"The hard evidence of harm has increased dramatically, and there's more and more global evidence showing the harm for our young people. So we've got things like mental health impacts on our young, increases in anxiety, depression, impacts on sleep, addiction, attention spans are being reduced, self-worth."

Brooker is involved with a government group looking to combating child exploitation, which this week saw evidence of increases in child grooming and exploitation on social media.

"We've got really significant harms occurring for our young people, really significant risk and we've got nothing in place to protect them. Really it's time for us to do something about it on a systemic level."

She said Australia was trialing different ways to see how the new law could potentially work. Social media companies would need to take steps to age verify users.

"For age assurance there are options available like facial age estimation, the digital ID apps, ID verification, to where a user uploads the ID document and captures the selfie to prove that it's them. Other options are electronic ID checks, database checks, social security number checks, plenty of methods that we could use, but [it] comes down to determining the safest options for privacy.

"Australia has invested $6.5 million in a trial run to verify pornography websites in Australia so the conversation has been going on for a number of years."

But Lal is not fully onboard with the verification checks, saying requirements to upload government IDs to social media would create a large amount of concern about uploading personal identity and data leaks on social media.

Brooker said she understood the benefits to social media for helping marginalised communities, but there were more significant factors that could support them over social media.

"We do have quite good research that shows marginalised communities are at risk of harm and grooming online, and at risk of harmful content. So we just have to balance this out to determine what are the most significant risks and how can we better support marginalised groups without exposing them to the real harms that are available on social media."

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