On Nova 96.9’s Fitzy & Wippa with Kate Ritchie this morning Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced plans to legislate a minimum age for social media use and thanked and congratulated Michael “Wippa” Wipfi and 36 Months co-founder Rob Galluzzo, for their campaign to raise that age from 13 to 16, to better protect children’s mental health.
The PM acknowledges the pivotal impact Wippa’s ‘36 Months’ campaign has had saying:
“This is about letting children have a childhood. There’s nothing social about some social media taking our young Australians away from real friends and real experiences. It’s pretty simple. We want to get young Australians off their devices and onto the footy field or the netball court or the swimming pool or the tennis court and engaging with each other. And we know that social media is causing social harm. That’s why we’ve committed through the Cabinet meeting we held yesterday to ensure that we introduce legislation by the end of the year that will enable us to have this age verification trial that we put funding for in the budget in May. Australians deserve better, and we know that this is of such concern for Australian parents, they want to protect their kids, and the safety and mental and physical health of our young people is on the line here.”
You can hear the full conversation below:
Fitzy & Wippa with Kate Ritchie can be heard from 6am to 9am on Nova 96.9 in Sydney, nationally on the Nova Network from 5am or the daily podcast via the Nova Player.