After the recent school attack in Graz, which claimed the lives of ten people, the Austrian government announced that it would tighten access to social media for minors.
No concrete proposals have been put forward yet but Chancellor Christian Stocker (of the centre-right People’s Party) said introducing an age limit is “one of the possibilities.”
Most recently, Vice-Chancellor Andreas Babler (of the Social Democrats) proposed a social media ban for all children under the age of 15, saying: “We must protect our children from the algorithms of online corporations.”
Babler agrees with French President Emmanuel Macron, who recently advocated for an EU-wide social media ban for children following a fatal knife attack at a French school last week. Macron said social media was one of the factors to blame for violence among young people.
Babler suggested that the matter should be discussed during the Danish Council Presidency, which begins at the beginning of July.
Australia last year approved a social media ban for under-16s but a report by the country’s online safety regulator found children easily bypass such restrictions.
