It should be purely a parental responsibility to decide when kids are allowed on social media and not something for the government to decide.

They are at least claiming that government issued ID (including digital ID) won’t be mandatory and that platforms must offer alternative methods to verify age. It remains to be seen how this will actually be implemented though. They also say there will be no penalties for parents or children so it is basically ok to ignore it and work around the age verification measures.

https://www.itnews.com.au/news/gov-clarifies-identity-checks-for-social-media-as-law-is-passed-613494

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Parents cannot be trusted to raise their children, that is now the government’s job.

They’ll manage it as well as they manage everything else - like giving us a housing crisis in one of the most sparsely populated countries on the planet where no-one can afford anything..

A law like this isn't for parents, it's for social media companies. They want to make them lible in instances where their platform facilitates bullying/harassment/etc. That's why there's not penalties for children or parents.

It also sets a cultural precedent to dissuade parents from letting their children use social media. I don't have children so I can't speak from experience but having been a teenager myself on the burgeoning days of social media I would have been fairly annoyed with my parents if they said I couldn't use myspace lol.

Not saying I necessarily agree with it. This isn't a topic I'm well versed in since it doesn't directly affect me specifically, so it's hard to have stake in it.