High-flyer mums flex their parenting muscle

Newsroom

3 days ago

A year ago, a group of rich-lister mums met with other high fliers from all walks of life and political hues with one thing in mind.
Many were strangers to each other but the thing that united them was the push to bring in a law to get under-16-year-olds off social media.
Such is the power of the group B416 and their cause that politicians from all corners came along to their launch last month, including Act's David Seymour, who doesn't support a social media ban.
It took place just days after National's Catherine Wedd put forward her Social Media Age-Restricted Users Bill, a private member's bill.
Since the launch, the move has faced criticism of moral panic, overreach and that a ban will risk the lives of vulnerable young people.
But B416, which is co chaired by entrepreneur Cecilia Robinson and includes multi millionaire toy maker Anna Mowbray, says it is time to listen to parents who want to protect their children from social media harm.
Founding member Malindi MacLean, who heads Outward Bound, says a lot of the criticism is from people who are not parents.
'It's really important to keep [in mind] the lived experience of parents. They are day in, day out experiencing the impact of social media addiction, or addictive behaviours of their children.
'A parent who has just been dealing with their teenager who is self harming or has sextortion or dealing with cyber bullying … it's not something that you can argue with.'
Those arguing against a potential law that would force social media giants to use age verification measures on under 16s include retired district court judge, David Harvey; youth mental health activist Jazz Thornton; Victoria University media lecturer Alex Beattie and the online counselling service Youthline.
Judge Harvey says the proposed bill is flawed and could get the Government in trouble with freedom-of-expression laws. There's also a risk it will exclude the likes of YouTube, he says. Thornton believes a blanket ban will cause harm to the most vulnerable children and even lead to deaths, while Beattie argues social media can be a good communication tool for children and parents, and is not an addiction like smoking.
MacLean says she welcomes the debate but her group wants progress. Hence the extensive billboard and social media campaign.
She says the time and resources put into the campaign would be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. But the influential group has tapped into many communities for contributions and support.
'That just shows the appetite for change. The other thing is we've had a lot of support from organisations pro bono because most of them are human beings who also understand the issues.'
Wedd's bill is in the biscuit tin in Parliament which means it may never see the light of day before the next election. That's not good enough for B416, which wants to see a policy by the end of the year, following Australia's world-first law and trials of the age-verification technology already underway.
Tech expert Danu Abeysuriya of digital firm Rush tells The Detail how the technology could work and why it is important for New Zealand to follow Australia and others.
'We are a small nation and we don't represent a lot of revenue for large tech companies like Google, Facebook or X or Twitter. They focus on social media and to those companies our ad revenue is relatively small.
'Whatever we have to do we should still attempt to be practical otherwise we risk being alienated from those platforms. The balancing act is aligning what we do with what the rest of the world does.'
Abeysuriya says there are a number of age-verification options but one of the simplest would be a digital token bought from the Warehouse, the local petrol station or even the child's school.
Other technology could be used to put children off using social media, such as slowing down internet traffic. In this case the government would mandate Internet Service Providers such as One NZ to run traffic at half speed in specific time periods.
'It creates a bit of friction,' says Abeysuriya. 'If the TikTok video loads really slowly the kids might not watch the TikTok video, they might do something else like read a book.'
He says the solutions are ideas and nothing will be perfect.
'The bravery to move is the thing that needs to happen here.'
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