BBC speaks to Leo Puglisi about Australia's ban on social media for teens | 6 News

well for reaction to this story joining us now is journalist and founder of Australian news organization 6 News That's Leonardo py who happens to still be a teenager Leonardo you're very welcome thanks for joining us on BBC News I don't often mention my guests ages but unless they're relevant in this case you're 16 so unlikely to be affected by any ban but still um really interesting to hear your views on it yeah thank you and it's great to be on uh I obviously wouldn't be person affected by it we have a number of the members of the six news team who are 15 who would be affected uh by it but look I just don't think it's practical I mean the existing current rules about age that platforms have you can just basically tick a box or change the year of birth and you get around it and if you're putting in more serious uh technology well then there's obviously going to be some privacy concerns around that whether you're putting your your passport or your Medicare card into platforms like Twitter and meta uh and then of course those platforms would probably need to comply with the Federal government and neither seem to be on the same page with uh in recent months Mr albanesi chose to focus a lot didn't he on Outdoor Pursuits he talks about football swimming Etc you know you're a student you've got homework I know you had a history exam today I hope that went well uh be frank with us when you have free time how much of that is online rather than outside U somewhat a significant amount and of course part of that is because of of six news and part of that that is in my free time but look there can be a balance right uh like my brother for instance he would be affected by this band he's a younger teenager uh but he plays on a footy team but also he uses Tik Tok and Instagram uh to share photos of planes he does plane spawning and he's met with other people his age as part of that uh that Community that's something he's able to do online while also going outside you can have both it's not a one or the other situation here at the BBC we reported recently on how algorithms were showing violent content especially to young men teenagers uh do you think the government is is going after the wrong people or the wrong organizations here should it be focusing more on the social media companies themselves I think absolutely yeah and look that content unless there's another proposal and as you mentioned in the intro right we don't have all the details yet but that content would still exist and a 15-year-old or a 17y old whatever the age they choose to be allowed to be on it um they will still be able to see that content and they might react for lack of a better word worse than some 14 or 15y old M it's all about the individuals and individual parents and individual kids where education is important where other uh tools are important but a blanket band just I guess doesn't account for all the nuances as I mentioned before are there any positives from this debate this dialogue look I mean it's raising concerns about uh uh what content kids see on social media which I agree is a real problem and uh and look that does have to be addressed um but ultimately it's just led to a lot of confusion as we've said right there are no full details yet we don't know the ages we don't even know what platforms will be banned and what's officially considered social media right will they ban YouTube which is pretty ridiculous we use YouTube for a lot of our school assignments I can't imagine that being banned or or that kind of ban being uh successful so still a lot that we don't know yet but at least we're talking about there being uh issues facing young people on social media and it's good that we're able to speak to young people about it Leonardo thank you very much for talking to me today Leonardo police [Music] [Music]