Emma Comer (Petrie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Communications. What has been the impact of the Albanese Labor government's social media age restrictions so far, and how is this policy helping to protect young Australians from the harm of social media?

Anika Wells (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Sport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Petrie for her question and for introducing me to the students at the glorious Humpybong State School on 9 December last year, just 24 hours before the ban hit, to talk about what their life was going to look like in just 24 hours. On 10 December, Australia's online culture changed for the better. On 10 December, parents, teachers, carers, kids and government stood shoulder to shoulder against the social media giants. On 10 December, we sent a clear message to big tech to let Australian kids be kids, and, in the first week of Australia's world-leading social media law, 4.7 million accounts were deactivated, removed or restricted. That is a result to celebrate.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Lindsay will cease interjecting.

Anika Wells (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Sport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If you average that 4.7 million across all of our 151 electorates, it works out to 31,125 accounts in each of our electorates—electorates like Petrie or Banks or Bass. However, despite our best efforts—and I try to deactivate these accounts as quickly as possible—there are a number of accounts that still remain very active in particular electorates. There are social media accounts that remain very active in Hume and in Wannon and in Lindsay. Nonetheless, we can't catch them all, but we will keep working on this because implementation, we know, will not be perfect but will be really important. Every social media account that we deactivate is an extra opportunity for young Australians to make a connection in real life—to play sport, to listen to music, to learn an instrument or to read a book from the library. They can discover and learn who they are before these social media platforms assume who they are, and they get a bit of a reprieve from the algorithms, the endless scroll, the constant notifications and the pressure to get likes.

Australian parents can be confident that their kids can have their childhood back, and I've heard from kids, teachers, parents and carers right across the country who proudly back this law. One email that resonates was from a parent and educator, who wrote, 'Watching my daughter play with her younger siblings recently, I caught myself imagining the world that she might inherit because of the decisions that you've made.' This is what these changes are doing—helping kids build real-world connections. This is an incredible Australian story. It is about delivering cultural change that will take time. We don't expect information to be perfect, but we expect progress and continuous improvement, and we will hold social media companies accountable.