It's ridiculous really.. my kids see things online and ask me anything regarding what it means, I use it as a teaching moment and we talk about it. Why and how is someone like Andrew Tate popular with boys of a certain age, for example. How does Instagram affect how girls view their bodies and affect their self esteem? How did something like tiktok change the shape of social media in general and what does it mean? I enjoy these conversations with my kids as they arise. Acknowledgement of something as harmful, without any debate about how, is, in itself, harmful. And insulting to young people. And also ultimately useless because kids know their way around VPNs etc. It's only ultimately going to inconvenience me and compromise my own desire for anonymity and privacy. What 3rd party application will be entrusted with my age checking and how? Ugh.

Theres no line for the Liberals to win a young constituency of voters on this. They voted in line with Labor and waved it through Parliament.

Part of me knows this is a populist strategy, but there is the chance that the Parliament has been privy to information the public isn't.

Three things make me wonder if theres some urgent-ish security concern raised in regards radicalisation of young people driving this,

1. Both Partys generally line up on National Security matters.
2. They cut debate, and oversight. Maybe to save time, maybe because they are allowed to specify the real reason.
3. The Big Social media companies haven't wet the bed and begun a campaign against it.

If this is related to security, then theres probably other clues. It'd be interesting to see if theres a difference in different country's Social Medias reactions, say tiktok's reaction as opposed youtube's? There could be a clue there. We're not far off the Aus election, but we have also just witnessed a fairly hot election in the USA, maybe we should be looking back at that, instead of forward.

Or i'm wrong and its just a populist election move that the Liberals weren't going to let Labor capture the narrative on.