A government-led committee has declined to fully back the government’s own plan to impose an age limit on the use of social media.

It has also been revealed that a trial of potential technologies to be used to conduct age verification online will not be completed until mid-next year, after the next federal election, with a United Kingdom-based company enlisted to assist with this work.

The Joint Select Committee on Social Media and Australian Society, which launched its investigation in May this year, handed down its final report this week, focusing on the “wicked problem” of balancing the positive aspects of social media with its downsides.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced earlier this month that the government would be moving to ban children aged under 16 from using certain social media platforms, with legislation to be introduced during the current sitting fortnight.

The plan has bipartisan support and was a central focus of the Joint Committee’s final report.

But despite the government moving ahead with the plan, the government-backed committee did not recommend that such a social media ban be introduced, instead backing the ongoing trial of potential technologies and urging that relevant policies be co-designed with the young people who will be impacted by them.

Greens say no

In additional comments to the report, participating Greens MPs said that after hearing a wealth of expert evidence and testimony, the committee had declined to back the social media age ban.

“After months of evidence from experts, parents, young people, organisations and community members, this joint committee inquiry has not recommended an age ban on social media,” the Greens additional comments said.

“It is important to note this at the outset, because this is a well-informed majority decision. Unlike the Albanese government’s recent announcement of an age ban of 16 which has been supported by Peter Dutton and the Coalition, the committee’s decision is supported by evidence and facts.”

The committee said it was “highly supportive” of the Industry Department’s age verification trial, which is testing the available technologies available to verify the age of people online and called for the results of this to be reported to both Houses of Parliament.

“The committee received substantial evidence on proposals to verify a user’s age online,” the report said.

“The complexity of the issue is evident in the number of submissions received and the range of issues they traverse.

“The committee heard contrasting views on whether making it safer for children means preventing them from accessing social media until they reach a certain age.”

UK firm wins age verification contract

The federal government this week awarded a contract to a UK-based organisation to assist with the age assurance trial.

A consortium led by the Age Check Certification Scheme (ACCS) will begin working on the trial immediately, examining age verification, age estimation, age inference, parental certifications or controls, tech stack deployments and tech readiness assessments in an Australian context.

The final report from this trial is expected to be handed to the federal government by mid-next year.

Despite not receiving the results of the trial that will determine how age verification can be possible, the federal government will introduce legislation formalising the age ban in the current sitting fortnight.

The Greens MPs said this was “disappointing and concerning”.

“Given this legislation would be a world first, it is more important than ever that the detail is thought-out properly – yet seemingly no evidence or consultation with experts has been taken into account,” they said.

“The government’s proposed ban on social media appears to be a knee-jerk reaction to a complex problem.”

Meta short-changing Australians

The social media committee made 12 recommendations in its final report, including for greater enforceability of Australian laws for social media platforms, and the introduction of a digital duty of care, which was announced by the Labor government last week.

“The committee is strongly of the view that platforms, particularly Meta, are actively choosing not to provide the same levels of protection for users, transparency and accountability mechanisms in Australia that they do in other jurisdictions,” the final report said.

The committee also recommended that the government force social media platforms to introduce measures giving users greater control over what user-generated content and paid content they see, require safety-by-design principles in all current and future platform technologies, and require big tech firms to have transparent complaints mechanisms in place.