New Zealand to propose bill banning social media for children under 16

SYDNEY - New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said on Monday his party will introduce a bill in Parliament that seeks to ban children under 16 from using social media, proposing fines of up to 10% of a platform's global revenue for non-compliance.

The bill would require social media platforms to take reasonable steps to verify users' ages, including by utilising existing account information, facial technology and digital identity documents.

"We simply cannot accept the harm being done to a generation of New Zealand children," Luxon said in a statement.

"Social media is exposing them to harmful content, addictive technology and pressures they are not equipped to deal with and it's affecting their family life, mental health, sleep and education."

It was not immediately clear if the bill would garner sufficient support to pass through Parliament, with one of Luxon's coalition partners, the New Zealand First party, saying it would not support it.

"We have been concerned with the proposed legislation and the direction and slippery slope that legislation like this will inevitably take our country," New Zealand First leader Winston Peters, who is also the country's foreign minister, said in a post on X.

In December, Australia became the world's first country to ban social media for children under 16, blocking them from platforms including TikTok, Alphabet's GOOGL.O YouTube and Meta's META.O Instagram and Facebook.

That legislation had been a "colossal failure," Peters said, adding that keeping children off social media should be the responsibility of parents.

"I won't pretend that it will be simple or that it will be perfect," Luxon said at an event.

"We won't get every single child off social media. Some will always find ways around it, but frankly, it's just way too important not to at least try."

-Reporting by Renju Jose and Alasdair Pal in Sydney; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Thomas Derpinghaus/Reuters