Australia's new law to keep kids away from porn

Australia's latest online safety law requiring users to prove they are over 18 before accessing adult content like porn has been broadly hailed as being good for society.

Sites must take meaningful steps to verify a user's age or face significant financial penalties.

Rorke Wilson, a social media law specialist, has welcomed this latest move.

However, he is critical of the country's world-first ban on 10 major social media sites for all citizens under 16, which came into effect in December last year.

"It's not achieving what the Australian government was hoping to. We're seeing a massive spike in virtual private network (VPN) downloading. As well as teens just going to different social media websites in order to get their fix. But when it comes to the ban on pornography, I actually do think it is a really good thing to introduce these age verification methods."

"When we're restricting social media in general there's so much more that we're not letting kids get access to which can have detrimental effects. If there are children from rural areas, if there are children from sexual, ethnic minorities and struggle to find people like themselves in the real world, they can find people online. However, I don't think there's any benefit that comes from pornography for children."

Wilson said even though kids may get past the verification steps on porn sites, it can massively decrease the amount of accidental exposure to it.

"When I speak at schools and I ask them how many of you have seen someone naked on the internet when you didn't plan to, at least 70% of the hands in the room go up."

He said with kids, pornography wreaks havoc on the young mind. "It plays on all the dopamine systems and is so addicting to them. And they can become quite obsessed with it."

To listen to Wilson's full discussion with CapeTalk's John Maythem, click the link below: