VIENNA: Austria on Thursday (Mar 26) announced it will soon ban social media for children up to the age of 14, saying it spawned addiction, glorified violence, spread misinformation and set unrealistic beauty standards.
“It is almost impossible for parents to control their children’s consumption” on these platforms, which are designed to make them “deliberately dependent”, Vice-Chancellor Andreas Babler told a press conference.
The country of 9.2 million hopes to be able to present the new law “as early as this summer” so it can enter into force “as quickly as possible”, he said.
Babler said Austria will target platforms using “algorithms that create addiction, generate profits and have harmful effects”.
Babler said children were “left to their own devices in a world where they are confronted, for example, with unrealistic beauty ideals, the glorification of violence, disinformation, and where they are also manipulated”.
But he said there was still no consensus among the three parties in the ruling coalition regarding the verification method that will be put in place.
A three-week “no mobile phone” experiment, led by the education ministry and involving 72,000 pupils and their families, has just ended in Austria.
“The feedback we have is that this has been a kind of withdrawal experience for the pupils and that they are aware of the harmful effects of their excessive consumption,” Education Minister Christoph Wiederkehr told the news conference.
In addition to the ban itself, the Austrian government plans to introduce a new compulsory subject in schools called “Media and Democracy,” intended to help pupils distinguish truth from falsehood and recognise anti-democratic attempts at influence.
The far-right FPÖ party, which came first in the 2024 legislative elections without managing to form a government, denounced the move as a “frontal assault on freedom of expression”.
“Now that critical voices, alternative media and patriotic forces are gaining reach on social networks, they suddenly want to impose bans and censorship measures,” FPÖ MP Katayun Pracher-Hilander said.