To Be or Not Youtu-Be? (Naked City)

It’s the second most visited website in the world with around 3 billion active users. Every minute well over 500 hours of content are added to the platform with a staggering 5 billion individual items currently on offer. It’s ‘YouTube’ of course and the Australian Government, will all good intentions, is now planning to make it inaccessible to the under 16s as part of its social media legislation.

The cynics would say good luck with that one! Originally it was the likes of TikTok and Snapchat that were the focus of the social media ban, and YouTube was to be exempt.

That was in November of last year when the then communications minister Michelle Rowland introduced the legislation in Parliament, greenlighting YouTube for its “significant purpose to enable young people to get the education and health support they would need”.

Now on the advice of the eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant to the Minister for Communications Anika Wells, it seems YouTube will also be blacklisted.

eSafety admitted that YouTube had many educational and otherwise beneficial uses but “was concerned that the popular use of YouTube among children, coupled with reports of exposure to harmful content and the platform’s use of certain features and functionality, is not consistent with the purpose of the SMMA (Social Media Minimum Age) obligation to reduce the risk of harm.”

They went on to add: “Results from eSafety’s recent Youth Survey indicated YouTube was the most popular social media platform children had ever used, with 76 per cent of 10 to 15-year-olds having used YouTube, making it significantly more popular than other social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat, especially among the 10 to 12-year-old cohort.”

YouTube responded to the impending ban by stating: “YouTube is not a social media platform; it is a video streaming platform with a library of free, high-quality content. eSafety’s advice to include YouTube in the social media ban is in direct contradiction to the government’s own commitment, its own research on community sentiment, independent research, and the view of Australian parents, teachers and other key stakeholders in this debate.”

We have yet to learn just how the under 16s ban will be enforced but it seems problematic to say the least. The current guidelines suggest: “The onus is on the applicable service providers to introduce systems and processes that ensure people under the minimum age cannot create or keep a social media account. This means there will be no penalties for age-restricted users who gain access to an age-restricted social media platform, or for their parents or carers.”

If you are under 16 and attempting to log onto ‘YouTube’ all sorts of age authentication methods have been suggested including facial recognition technology. It’s no secret curious under sixteens are already circumventing age restrictions and accessing porn sites and other x rated material on the net. It’s also no different to situations long before the internet when young teenage schoolboys would bring their dad’s naughty ‘girlie’ mags to school to browse in clandestine fashion with their high school buddies.

It’s an inherent problem when you ban something, particularly in the present day when the internet is virtually an open door to anything from good to evil. When the under 16s social media restrictions do come into law it appears parental responsibility needs to play a major role. No doubt many parents will embrace the guidelines and police their youngsters’ phones and laptops Others might not give a damn or find it just impossible to maintain some kind of 24/7 surveillance.

Many children in the 12 to 16 age range are naturally rebellious and being told not to do something only increases their desire to actually do it. If they can’t watch YouTube on their own device, maybe there will be an older sibling or friend happy to make their laptop available – just one of numerous scenarios to beat the ban.

There’s definitely a nasty side to social media and maybe all primary and high schools need to devote a few hours a week in discussing the responsible use of social media with their students. I’d have no problem if TikTok, Snapchat, X and numerous other sites disappeared off my screens forever but YouTube does provide an incredible source of information and archival material. YouTube claims that they use a combination of automated systems and human review to enforce their community guidelines and that seems to be working reasonably well. The only obscenity I have ever encountered are clips of Donald Trump and his cronies.

And the only thing I would like to see banned with YouTube are those annoying ‘countdown’ adverts that crop up at the very worst times, just as you are enjoying a holiday vlog of Siberia posted by an elderly Russian couple.