The New Statesman

Will Kirstama ban kids from social media.

The PM has said he's open-minded to a full-on Australia-style ban for under 16s.

I'm Olly Dougmore, and you're listening to Daily Politics from The New Statesman.

Joining me today is senior editor, George Eaton. Hello, George.

Hello, Ollie.

Tell me, George, what's been done in Australia?

How has it worked?

Yeah, so this was a world-first ban, banning under 16s from Facebook, X, Snapchat,

all of the big platforms.

And to use it now, they had their accounts deactivated, you now have age assurance measures,

so you need any government ID or biometric recognition.

And that's a sort of function of, I guess, like if you want to access a gambling site or

sites that host adult content in the same way there's an

onus now being placed on these publishers, these platforms that users have to verify their age.

Exactly that, yeah.

Okay.

Are any other countries following suit?

Yeah, the interesting thing is we are at a global tipping point in this.

I saw Jonathan Haight recently, the author wrote The Anxious Generation.

That's the book which inspired the Australian ban. And he said to me, this is a global moment

of change. It predicted others would follow Australia's lead. And they have done. So Pedro Sanchez,

...