VIENNA: Austria on Thursday (Mar 26) introduced it should quickly ban social media for youngsters as much as the age of 14, saying it spawned habit, glorified violence, unfold misinformation and set unrealistic magnificence requirements.
“It’s virtually unattainable for folks to manage their kids’s consumption” on these platforms, that are designed to make them “intentionally dependent”, Vice-Chancellor Andreas Babler instructed 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 actually enter into pressure “as rapidly as potential”, he stated.
Babler stated Austria will goal platforms utilizing “algorithms that create habit, generate income and have dangerous results”.
Babler stated kids had 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 stated there was nonetheless no consensus among the many three events within the ruling coalition relating to the verification methodology that shall 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 resulted in Austria.
“The suggestions we have now is that this has been a sort of withdrawal expertise for the pupils and that they’re conscious of the dangerous results of their extreme consumption,” Schooling Minister Christoph Wiederkehr instructed the information convention.
Along with the ban itself, the Austrian authorities plans to introduce a brand new obligatory topic in faculties referred to as “Media and Democracy,” meant to assist pupils distinguish reality from falsehood and recognise anti-democratic makes an attempt at affect.
The far-right FPÖ celebration, 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 crucial voices, different media and patriotic forces are gaining attain on social networks, they instantly wish to impose bans and censorship measures,” FPÖ MP Katayun Pracher-Hilander stated.
