Australians overwhelmingly support regulating social media and censoring harmful content, with six in 10 people polled backing an unproven proposal to ban access to children, exclusive research for the ABC’s Q+A shows.
As community concern grows around how foreign-owned social media platforms operate, and the threat of artificial intelligence further industrialising harm, the new YouGov/Q+A poll offers governments ammunition to act.
The weighted survey of 1,533 Australians showed 61 per cent supported restricting social media access to those younger than 17 — with similarly high support among Labor and Coalition supporters.
Younger Australians, unsurprisingly, aren’t fans: a slim majority (54 per cent) aged 18 to 24 were opposed.
In June, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton pledged to ban children from social media as a priority in government — despite warnings from Australia’s eSafety Commissioner that it would be difficult to enforce and push kids to potentially more harmful services.
Shadow communications minister David Coleman told Q+A that “no system will be 100 per cent perfect”.
“To argue that no rules should apply, simply because the rules may sometimes be broken, makes no sense at all,” he said.
“The tech platforms have been making these arguments for years and we need to have the strength and intellectual clarity to see through these tactics.”
The government has funded a $6.5 million trial of age assurance technology. Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said parents are “rightly concerned” about social media harm but she’s worried about the impact of a ban.
“The government has made it clear: any age limit for social media access — and its implementation — must be effective in the protection, not isolation, of young people,” she told Q+A.
Support for licences, content removal
Leaders from all sides of politics, federal and state, are now pushing for a regulatory crackdown on tech giants Google and Meta and platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X. The YouGov/Q+A poll shows Australians are hungry for it.
Asked if social media platforms should be licensed and held to codes of conduct around community standards — as TV and radio broadcasters are — a sizeable 84 per cent said yes.
The number was even higher — 87 per cent — among people who voted for the Coalition at the last election.
YouGov’s Director of Public Data, Paul Smith, said the “overwhelmingly high” result is “part of a consistent polling trend that Australians across the political spectrum see stronger regulation of big corporations as common sense”.
Concern for free speech appears limited: eight in 10 Australians believe a regulator should have the power to remove content, with only two in 10 supporting “complete free speech” on social media platforms.
In April, the eSafety Commissioner took Elon Musk’s X to the Federal Court to force the removal of graphic footage of a Sydney church stabbing, only to abandon the case in June.
X said the case “raised important questions on how legal powers can be used to threaten global censorship of speech”, with Mr Musk posting that “freedom of speech is worth fighting for”.
Are we breaking up with social media?
The YouGov/Q+A research revealed a majority of us (55 per cent) couldn’t last a week without internet access. But our relationship with social media may be shifting.
Six in 10 Australians said the platforms were making their lives worse. Around two-thirds (64 per cent) worried about a family member’s social media use.
Asked if they had “appreciation of the greater choices and opportunities” of social media, or “concern we don’t have a say in deciding what they do or provide”, six in 10 chose the latter.
A federal parliamentary committee has been probing platforms and regulation proposals in an inquiry due to deliver an interim report within weeks.
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland told Q+A the government was “resolute in our commitment to ensuring that online spaces are safe” and has “quadrupled” funding for the eSafety Commissioner to target and order the removal of harmful content.
Australians dream of a different approach.
YouGov asked if governments should tax profits made on the harvesting of personal information to fund “a publicly owned, community managed online platform for social information sharing and discussion”. A clear majority (61 per cent) liked the idea — though a quarter weren’t sure.
Watch Q+A on ABC TV tonight at 9.35pm or on-demand on ABC iview.