Joint Select Committee on Social Media and Australian Society 2024
Social Media companies have failed to put the welfare of children and young people ahead of their own vested interests.
With unfettered power and acting like rogue states, these wealthy and powerful corporations have engaged in social arson and created a poisonous ecosystem. This anti-social industry has not been forthcoming about its malign impact, especially on young people. Social psychologist Jonathon Haidt observes:“By designing a firehose of addictive content that entered through kids’ eyes and ears, and by displacing physical play and in-person socializing, these companies have rewired childhood and changed human development on an almost unimaginable scale.”
Social media platforms have become tools of sexual harassment, contributing to harmful sexual socialisation of young people and harmful sexual behaviours in schools. Schools have become sites of abuse. Based on her engagement with thousands of students in Australian schools, our Movement Director, Melinda Tankard Reist has documented routine sexual harassment, with girls subjected to groaning and moaning noises and sexual gestures, touched, threatened with rape if they don’t send nudes, sent unsolicited dick pics, had their bodies ranked and shared to Snapchat and sent live masturbation videos through Snapchat.
While we welcomed the introduction of the Criminal Code Amendment (Deepfake Sexual Material) Bill 2024, we believe it doesn’t go far enough. We believe creation alone should be an offence, whether the image is shared or not. Victims are violated regardless - they are harmed by having their likeness turned into porn whether the creator on-shares or keeps for himself. This is a significant gap in the Bill which we are seeking to rectify.
Until the products are proven safe for minors, companies should not be allowed to profit by putting them in harm’s way. Children should not be required to build capacity to keep themselves safe on platforms that are inherently dangerous, and for which children lack the developmental capacity to navigate safely. The responsibility should be on those who profit from the service to make sure their products and services are not causing harm.
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