South African government talks about TikTok and Instagram ban
Communications minister Solly Malatsi says the South African government is thinking about age-restricting social media use. However, there is much to be considered beforehand.
Speaking to Cape Talk, the minister said the government is considering the best approach to address increased online harm in the country.
“There is no doubt that we live in an age of increased online harms: children becoming increasingly more vulnerable to abuse, to cyberbullying, and even to age-inappropriate content,” Malatsi said.
He added that this is occurring to the extent that there’s been a rise in the luring and grooming of children online.
Asked whether South Africa could follow the lead of Australia and France in age-gating social media, Malatsi said such a policy is under consideration.
“We obviously thought about what the countries are doing. The conversation itself is about putting guidelines in place and also enforcement,” Malatsi said.
He explained that there’s often a temptation, when faced with a societal problem, to crack down by implementing restrictions and bans.
“Prior to doing that, we have to capacitate ourselves with enough mechanisms both in government and even from a law enforcement perspective to be able to enforce those,” the minister said.
“Otherwise, we end up having cosmetic interventions that seem like we’re doing something and are not.”
He also highlighted weaknesses in Australia’s mechanism for banning social media use for people under 16.
“I was reading one report from Australia, and this kid got blocked from Instagram because of the age restriction,” Malatsi said.
“All he did was use his friend’s license and verification to circumvent that restriction. So already even in that, there are weaknesses.”
He added that he doesn’t believe there will ever be a globally perfect solution, but he believes there must be guardrails in place to limit abuse.
Social media ban a good, but impractical idea
MyBroadband spoke to Digital Law Company founder and CEO Emma Sadleir following France and Australia’s moves to ban social media use for children under 15 and 16, respectively.
She believes a ban on social media use by young South Africans would be a good idea, but doesn’t think it would be effective.
“I would love South Africa to. I think there’s no question social media should be age-gated, because at its core it’s an addictive thing,” Sadleir said.
She compared age-gating social media to age-gating addictive substances and activities, such as gambling, alcohol, certain drugs, and cigarettes.
“I think it’s absolutely mad to let these youngsters on these platforms. They’re too harmful, but I don’t think that it’s going to happen because it won’t be enforced,” Sadleir said.
She explained that if such a policy were approved in South Africa, it wouldn’t be worth the paper it’s written on.
This is because the companies affected don’t have offices in the country, except for Facebook owner Meta Platforms.
“The way the Australian law is formulated is that if a child under age accesses those platforms, it’s the company that’s going to have to pay fines, it’s not the child committing a criminal offence,” Sadleir said.
“So how do you enforce that if they don’t have any jurisdiction here. Already, just trying to get these companies to comply with existing South African laws is a challenge.”
She believes no such ban would be effective unless the government gets brave enough to block major social media platforms from operating in the country unless they comply.
“That’s the only big stick we’ve got. We’ve got no people we can go and arrest, we’ve got no company we can fine, there are no companies registered in South Africa,” Sadleir said.
While many adults may see social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram as harmless or not being too harmful, the same can’t be said for younger minds.
“It’s just an endless stream of self-harm, depression, emo content, and eating disorder content. It’s mad,” Sadleir said.
“They should be age-gated. There should be better enforcement. However, it really wouldn’t be worth the paper it’s written on.”
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