Latest / Best of Business / Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: We need the teen social media ban, because the companies won't enforce it

Transcript

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: We need the teen social media ban, because the companies won't enforce it · Best of Business

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talk st be
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Listen. I've got an update for you on the social
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: media ban for kids situations. So over in Australia, the
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: social media companies have now admitted they can kick underage
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: kids off their platforms, and they've admitted that they will
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: They will start enforcing the band when the band in
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Australia comes into effect on December tenth. Now, this is
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: not a surprise to me that they can actually do it,
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: because I never believe they're nonsense when they said, oh,
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: it's impossible to age verify. How we couldn't I guess
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: they can read it over in the UK does it
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: it age verifies and stops people seeing content. It's completely
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: possible to do. And it's pretty obvious that they already
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: have a rough idea of roughly how old the kids are,
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: because you know, that's why they feed teenage content to
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: teenage people. What I think we should take from this, though,
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: is that we should never believe the social media companies
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: when they say they can't stop kids using their products. Well,
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: I think you should do is kind of take the
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: approach of treating them a little bit like the tobacco
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: companies of old, completely untrustworthy, want to pedle their product,
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: do not want to stop peddling their product. In fact,
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: I think, to be honest, that there is a useful
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: parallel here with the way that we treat siggi's and
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: how we should be treating social media companies. We ban
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: kids under the age of eighteen from buying siggis, We
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: ban them from buying booze because we know it's bad
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: from them. When they're older, they can use it, hopefully
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: they use it wisely, but not when their little brains
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: and their little bodies are still developing. And I think
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: the same is true of social media. And yes, like
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: the Siggis and the booze, the kids are going to
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: find a way to get their get around it and
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: get their hands on it. On in New Year's Eve
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: when they are sixteen, they're going to get completely drunk,
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: but hopefully it'll be a rare occasion, not in every
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: weekend type of thing. And in the case of banning
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: the booze and the Siggies, we could have left that
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: up to the parents. We could have said, nah, it's okay,
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: you decide if your kids want to smoke and drink
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: under the age of eighteen, and parents should play a role, right,
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: But I think we all decided as a group that
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: this was worth banning, and I think we need to
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: do the same thing with social media. And I think
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: we need to do it mainly for the social media
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: companies because they are not prepared to do it themselves
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: until they're faced to, just like in Australia.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: For more from Used Talk sed B, listen live on
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio.