Latest news with #AngeLavoipierre

ABC News
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Brain Rot: Meet the people who ditched their smartphones. Is it worth it?
Ange Lavoipierre: Where's the last place you went that your phone couldn't come? Stan Awtrey: They tell people, leave your mobile phones in your car, don't bring them on the property. Because what will happen is if they find you with one, whether you're using it or if it's in your pocket, they will escort you from their premises, take away your badge. I mean, it is that strict. Ange Lavoipierre: It's not a maximum security prison. Stan Awtrey: And I've had friends and colleagues make a mistake of walking out with a cell phone and getting caught. Ange Lavoipierre: And it's not the White House Situation Room. Stan Awtrey: One guy was banned for two years because of what he did. Ange Lavoipierre: Or a meditation retreat. But we're getting warmer. Stan Awtrey: Some people have described going to the Masters as almost a spiritual experience. And I think that's true for the most part. Woo! It's interesting to be in a large crowd of people and no one has their cell phones because the people are actually watching the golf and they're staying in the moment. And that's very rare and unusual these days. Ange Lavoipierre: It takes dedication to be a spectator at the US Golf Masters in Augusta, Georgia. Every April, thousands of golf enthusiasts make the trade. Your phone for uninterrupted golf. Stan Awtrey: You can just kind of be quiet, pay attention and watch. Keep the memories, make the memories and keep them in your brain for a change. Ange Lavoipierre: That tournament has had a no phones policy in place since before smartphones were invented. It just goes to show that sometimes if you stand still long enough, the zeitgeist comes to you. Because in 2025, more and more people seem to be fantasising about a life off the grid. Vox Pop: I can definitely live without internet. I want to so bad. I've tried to a lot and then I'll get all my friends' numbers and text them instead. But you just, like, you fall out socially so quickly. Ange Lavoipierre: Today, we meet the people who aren't just fantasising about it, they're going through with it. Jameson Butler: Having a flip phone in 2025 definitely does make my life harder in some aspects. But honestly, since I've gotten rid of my smartphone, I'm more on top of everything. I've become a lot less scatterbrained. Ange Lavoipierre: I'm Ange Lavoipierre, the ABC's national technology reporter. And this is Brain Rot, a series from Science Friction about how tech is changing our brains. In our final episode, you'll hear from the people and entire communities who are so keen to avoid those changes that they've noped out of smartphones altogether, maybe for good. Jameson Butler: We realised that the hardest part about making that transition is the feelings of isolation that come with it and a lack of community. So we decided that we wanted to create a community of like-minded people. Ange Lavoipierre: So what is it like to make the switch? Can governments make the switch for us? And at the end of the day, is it worth it? (Music) If you drive about 45 minutes south from central Paris, past the fringes of the city, you'll find a 12th century village nestled on the banks of the Seine River. Vincent Paul-Petit (Translation): So my name is Vincent, that's my first name, Paul Petit, and that's my last name. And I am the mayor of the commune, of the commune in France, a commune of 2,000 inhabitants in Seine-Port. Ange Lavoipierre: If you're picturing the village from the movie Chocolat, you're not far off. Saint-Paul is full of old stone buildings and churches. There's a horse-riding school, a meditation centre, a fishing club and a creperie. Vincent Paul-Petit (Translation): It's a life of... it's a village life. I see my job as mayor as managing the city, of course, but also taking new initiatives to transform social life, to improve social life, so that there develops a solidarity. Ange Lavoipierre: But no matter how picturesque the location, there's no escaping smartphones. And Vincent Paul Petit is not a fan. Vincent Paul-Petit (Translation): In front of schools, it's terrible. Parents don't talk to each other anymore. They're all glued to their screens. There are some who walk down the street to watch their favourite series, and then in gathering places, it's still sad to see that natural, spontaneous exchange no longer exists or is damaged at the very least. Ange Lavoipierre: So a few years ago, he came up with a somewhat radical proposal. Vincent Paul-Petit (Translation): I announced it in June 2023 at the school fair, since I still saw many, many children staring at their smartphones in the street or everywhere. I announced that we were going to ban screens, the use of smartphones in public spaces, in the town. It was a form of provocation to help everyone wake up to this social issue, which is a huge issue, a huge social difficulty. Ange Lavoipierre: It was decided the town should vote on it, and at the beginning of 2024, after some debate, Seine-Port's smartphone ban was passed, with 54% of people voting in favour. That meant no scrolling outside the school gates, in parks, on footpaths, and certainly not in the creperie. Vincent Paul-Petit (Translation): The shopkeepers are very happy with the progress we've felt in the town. They've all put a sticker inside their stores, a big sticker saying, screen-free spaces, smartphone-free spaces. So the impact has been quite clear. They appreciate being able to interact with their customers. People laugh at the mayor who arrives and says, hide your phone, the mayor is coming. That's the side of it. Well, it's really rather amusing. Ange Lavoipierre: There's one problem, though. It turns out the ban wasn't strictly legal. Vincent Paul-Petit (Translation): Well, officially, it's not completely official, all that, because, well, from a legal point of view, it's quite weak, because the mayor doesn't have the power to prohibit the use of a telephone, a smartphone in the street, in your town. I know that. Ange Lavoipierre: So the ban was wound back slightly. It's now referred to as a guideline or a charter, because 54% might be a majority, but it's only a slim one. Vincent Paul-Petit (Translation): There are people who also didn't agree with this measure. You know, I've heard that I'm against freedoms. So it's a criticism, which I understand, but which is obviously paradoxical. Yes, banning the use of a device in public spaces or for young people is reducing their freedom. You could say that. We can also say that spending eight or 10 hours a day behind a screen is against freedoms. Ange Lavoipierre: Despite the fact that his ban turned out to be less of a ban-ban and more of a ban-vibe, he's convinced it's made a real difference. Vincent Paul-Petit (Translation): What matters is that people have adopted this charter and they themselves believe that we need to stop. Objectively, people talk to each other more. In front of schools, at the school gates, I don't see smartphones anymore. You know, I'm from a community of 2,000 inhabitants who wanted to live better together. I've had, I think, roughly 350 to 400 interviews around the world, half in France, half in the rest of the world. So we're touching on something that's absolutely central to our lives. Ange Lavoipierre: Vincent Paul Petit isn't the first political leader who's tried prying people away from their screens using the legal instruments of government. The bigger question is whether laws and statutes are the best way to go about it. And Australia is about to find out. Radio Announcer (Archive): On today's program, the Parliament passes legislation banning under-16s from using social media. Ange Lavoipierre: From December this year, Australians younger than 16 will, at least in theory, be banned from most of the world's major social media platforms, including TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. Anthony Albanese (Archive): Social media is doing harm to our kids, and I'm calling time on it. And I want Australian parents and families to know that the government has your back. Ange Lavoipierre: The ban passed Parliament late last year on a wave of public enthusiasm, but the policy has always had its sceptics. Lisa Given: It had bipartisan support, and certainly the percentage of parents and other adults were saying, we want this legislation, mainly because Australians are struggling with inappropriate content online. My worry is that most Australians likely did not read the fine print or understand exactly what the limitations of the legislation were when we were having those discussions. Ange Lavoipierre: Lisa Given is a professor of information sciences at RMIT University, and one of many experts who oppose the policy. Lisa Given: We certainly at the time saw, you know, about 140 experts sign an open letter saying that the social media ban was not the solution. You know, many people are expecting that this will keep kids safe. At the end of the day, the only way to do that is really to address inappropriate content at source. This legislation does not deal with the content. It does not hold tech companies to account in that way. Ange Lavoipierre: She, like a lot of experts, has a long list of doubts about this policy. They're worried about whether the right tech to pull this off even exists yet, what asking 20-something million Australians to prove their age could mean for their privacy, and how well it'll actually work. Lisa Given: There are flaws on either side, and so we are going to see kind of a messy situation emerging immediately where people, you know, will have what they call false positives, false negatives. And if we now introduce another layer of inappropriate guessing of people's ages and potentially locking out older teens when they should have access, as well as the introduction of workarounds, VPNs, and even just getting access through older siblings or friends or other ways that people have often found their way into material that was not age-appropriate, at the end of the day, it's not going to achieve what the government had hoped it would achieve. Ange Lavoipierre: Even if the ban works perfectly, it's built on a largely unproven assumption because there is ongoing debate in the scientific community about how much harm smartphones and social media are actually responsible for. There's plenty of evidence linking excessive phone use to worse outcomes to do with attention, mood disorders, social isolation, just to name a few. But the proof that it's actually causing those problems is harder to come by. Still, on some level, people do seem to want to get away from their tech. Vox Pop: To be able to log off and live without any other stimulation is almost a privilege, I suppose. Maybe, like, go on a camping trip or something like that, but apart from that, I don't think you could probably do it forever. Vox Pop: It's almost like you don't have the option to delete the app, which is a bit annoying, actually, because I would like to just delete it because I don't really find any value in it. Ange Lavoipierre: In fact, a recent survey in the UK found almost half of the 16- to 21-year-olds they asked would rather live their lives without the internet full stop. Australia's ban is really just the government's effort to address that public mood. But policy takes years, and even then, there's no guarantee it'll actually work. So in the meantime, people have started looking for their own solutions. Steph Challis: As soon as my eldest child was born around eight years ago, I was worried about screens. Ange Lavoipierre: Steph Challis is a high school teacher in Echuca in regional Victoria and a parent to two primary school-aged kids. Steph Challis: I was really conscious to not have my screen out, to not have my phone out around my children, and it was this gut feel that it wasn't the right thing to do, but I could never quite put that into words or I didn't have any evidence to back that feeling up. Ange Lavoipierre: Then she read The Anxious Generation. It's a hugely popular book from last year, written by a social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt. Steph Challis: I all of a sudden had the evidence in front of me about why screens, and particularly smartphones and social media, were not appropriate for kids, and that's really what galvanised me to try and do something about it. Ange Lavoipierre: It's worth noting that, along with a ton of praise, Haidt's book has copped a fair bit of criticism too, mostly for skipping over that ambiguity in the science so far about whether phone use is actually causing all the problems he's worried about. But it spoke to Steph so powerfully that she decided to take action. Steph Challis: I created a survey, just asking a few short questions about how worried people were about what they thought they would do with smartphones and social media in terms of their children, and I just sent it, ironically, through social media platforms to all the parents that I knew around my district. Ange Lavoipierre: The 60 or so parents who responded to Steph's survey seemed just as worried as she was. Steph Challis: And that gave me some confidence to move forward. So we called ourselves The Phone Pledge. Ange Lavoipierre: The Phone Pledge is parents agreeing to delay the moment they give their kids a smartphone. Steph Challis: We would encourage parents to wait until 16 at least. Personally, I'm not giving my children a smartphone, ever. They can get one themselves when they're adults. That's not saying we won't give them a, you know, a Nokia or another sort of retro phone that they can call and text on. I have no qualms about that at all. Ange Lavoipierre: There's no set age they have in mind. The point is really just to put it off. Steph Challis: Delaying as long as possible is what we're advocating for. If we reach parents that were probably going to give their children a smartphone and a TikTok account in Grade 5 and they decide to wait until Year 7 and Year 8, that's still progress and that's still something to be celebrated. Ange Lavoipierre: And while reading Jonathan Haidt's book might have galvanised her into action, Steph's feelings on the matter first formed in the classroom. Steph Challis: I work at a K-12 school, so our Grade 5 teachers and our Grade 6 teachers are reporting that that's really when the issues are starting to play out. Students are just tired all the time and they openly admit that a lot of that is because of their electronic devices. Even if children are not intending to stay up quite so late, they're finding that they're staying up later than they intend to due to the fact that they're just losing track of time on their phones, which we all do. We know how easy that is to do. Ange Lavoipierre: Similar movements have emerged around the world, and some are massive. In the US, an organisation called Wait Until 8th asks parents to hold off on buying their kids a smartphone until 8th grade at least. Then there's Unplugged Canada and a group called Take The Pledge in the UK. But in the same way governments struggle to make bans work, there's only so much parents can do if their kids are still determined to go online. Jameson Butler: I think that experience of being young and knowing what it's like to have someone telling you how bad screens are and trying to take away your screens, that experience really informed the mission of the Luddite Club. Ange Lavoipierre: This is Jameson Butler. She's one of the co-founders of the Luddite Club, a group of young New Yorkers rejecting smartphones and social media. Jameson Butler: Nobody's taking away your phone. You're giving up your phone. And I think that perspective switch is so, so important, especially for young people and if you want to get young people to do anything. Ange Lavoipierre: Jameson's 18 now, but she was 10 when she got her first smartphone. Jameson Butler: Around 12 is when I started becoming really engrossed in my phone and it started to take up a much larger chunk of my life. Despite all the times my parents tried to warn me and try to limit my screen time, it wasn't until I reached the conclusion that my phone had been harming me and my wellbeing that I really decided to do something about it. Ange Lavoipierre: The turning point was COVID, when her screen time reached eight hours a day. Jameson Butler: You know, something clicked and I was like, oh my God, I am wasting my life. I was kind of just sitting in my bed, wasting away. You know, I'm 14 years old and the world is so big and I've decided to just spend my whole day on the phone. I need to do something about this. Ange Lavoipierre: Jameson got off social media and bought a flip phone, which is in theory at least one of the more isolating things you can do as a teenager in the 2020s. But a couple of months later, she met someone else her age who had done the same thing. Jameson Butler: One day I was at a show of a local band in the park, the local park, and I met this girl named Logan, who was two years older than me. And at that point she had no phone at all. And I just remember being totally amazed and also incredibly inspired. This was the first time I had ever heard, let alone met someone, another young person, who was interested in this idea of unplugging. So there was an instant connection that she felt too. I don't think she had met any other like-minded young people. So we decided that we wanted to create a community that was dedicated to being offline, living in the moment, and helping other people unplug from the digital world. Ange Lavoipierre: They had the idea, but they still needed a name. Jameson Butler: I think it might have been Logan's mom pitched the idea of Luddite. And I remember having no idea what that word meant in ninth grade and looking it up in the dictionary. And it is basically a derogatory term for somebody who is skeptical of technology and rejects technology. And I was like, oh my God, this is perfect. Ange Lavoipierre: Then they started holding meetings. Jameson Butler: We asked that everybody put their devices away for the duration of club because we've noticed that there's immediately meaningful conversations spawning. There's meaningful connections. There's the use of, you know, imagination, creativity, all these things that are just inherently human totally come back and reanimate people when you take away their phones. Ange Lavoipierre: Not owning a smartphone is the stuff of fantasies for lots of people. But every time I've felt the urge to lob mine into the ocean, it's not a love of technology that holds me back. It's the necessity of it. So what happens when you do? Jameson Butler: Having a flip phone in 2025 definitely does make my life harder in some aspects, especially as we now see QR codes everywhere, links to websites everywhere. A lot of my schoolwork is online. But I don't know if it's necessarily bad to put a little bit more effort in. For example, a lot of people are always like, oh my God, but GPS, how are you navigating around, you know, such a huge metropolitan city without a GPS? But the truth is, people have been navigating New York City without a GPS for so many years. I know it sounds stupid, but it's really empowering to know how to get places and take myself there and super consciously navigate these situations rather than just having some device tell me exactly where to go. Ange Lavoipierre: The Luddite Club has grown beyond New York. There are chapters forming in Florida and Philadelphia, but she's had blowback too. Jameson Butler: We definitely, like anything that, you know, gets publicity, have had some negative responses. I think one that was more popular was that the Luddite Club is classist, classist or pretentious. Ange Lavoipierre: And while calling it classist might sound far-fetched, it's basically the idea that if the world is now, for better or worse, optimised for smartphone users, not having one can make life harder in a lot of ways. Some of which Jameson mentioned, but there are more. Access to health care, transport, even doing your job. Like she says, most, if not all, of those barriers can be overcome. But if you're on minimum wage and just generally up against it, you may not have the time or energy for those battles. (Music) Jameson has been smartphone-free for about four years now, and plenty of people doubted she would make it this far, including her parents. Jameson Butler: Just because they knew me when I was so chronically online, I think it was really surprising for them to see me throw all of that away and completely veer in this new direction. I don't think they thought it was going to last. But I think as it did, they're definitely happy with it. Honestly, since I've gotten rid of my smartphone, I definitely spend more quality time with my family. I do my schoolwork faster, I have better grades, I'm more on top of everything. I've become a lot less scatterbrained. At family dinner, I'm like, Mom, get off of Facebook, because it used to be, Jameson, get off of Instagram. Ange Lavoipierre: Screen addiction is not an official diagnosis at this stage, but something useful that anyone who's fought addiction will tell you is that you have to want to quit. Government bans and pledges from parents are one thing, but back in Echuca, Steph Chalice says not all the kids are convinced just yet. Steph Challis: I guess there's a variety of responses depending on their age. My children are quite young, they're five and eight, and so I don't have any pushback from them yet because they're not interested in these devices yet. I think it's really key that we start this conversation with our kids as early as possible, because by the time they get to the point where they want smartphones and social media, then, I mean, they will have more pushback. I'm sure they'll still be annoyed at us at some points, but this message will be so embedded in them that I'm hoping that they've sort of resigned themselves to the fact that this is how it's going to be. Ange Lavoipierre: As a preview of what she might be in for there, the Year 7 and 8s she teaches don't really get it. Steph Challis: I talked to them a little bit about the social media minimum age bill and they think it's stupid, they love TikTok, they love Snapchat, it's their life. Ange Lavoipierre: But older students see it differently. Steph Challis: When I talk to Year 11 and 12s, they have a completely different point of view. They've matured a little, they can look back, they can see how these devices affected them throughout their adolescence, and the vast majority of them, even the ones who I know are addicted to their devices, have said to me that they think it's a really good thing that we're doing and that they don't think younger kids should be on social media. Jameson Butler: Being told by so many adults in your life, in your parents, this is bad for you, this is bad for you, this is bad for you, and obviously not listening, I think, and finding out for yourself, that experience is so universal. Our goal is to empower young people and give them the tools they need to help themselves because time and time again we see that kids are really not going to always listen to their parents and want to listen to adults, and it's really, it's not the most constructive way of creating change. Ange Lavoipierre: That's it for this episode of Brain Rot and for this series, which was made on the lands of the Gadigal and Menang Noongar people. Thanks as always to our producer Fiona Pepper and senior producer James Bullen. Thanks also to Sam Goerling for her help with the French translation for this episode, and a special thanks to our executive producer Patria Ladgrove and science editor Jonathan Webb. Brain Rot is a production of ABC Science and Radio National for Science Friction. If you liked the series or want to get in touch for any other reason, you can email us at sciencefriction@ My name's Ange Lavoipierre. Thanks for listening.

ABC News
30-06-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
Is the teen social media ban ready for rollout?
Sydney Pead Hello, I'm Sydney Pead, filling in for Sam Hawley for the next couple of weeks. Great to be with you. The countdown is on to the start of the social media ban for Australian children aged under 16. It's due to start in December, but which platforms are banned and how users will have to prove their age is yet to be revealed. Today, the ABC's national technology reporter, Ange Lavoipierre, on the many unanswered questions. On Gadigal land in Sydney, this is ABC News Daily. Ange you've been tracking this plan to ban kids under 16 from social media ever since the government announced this world-leading law last year. So just remind me, where is that ban up to? Because it's not in place yet. Ange Lavoipierre Oh, my goodness. I feel like I've been looking at and thinking about this ban for such a long time. So, yes, it was last November when the government passed this new law and this bill, an amendment to the Online Safety Act. Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister of Australia Social media is doing social harm to our young Australians and I am calling time on it. I want Australian parents to know that we have your back. Ange Lavoipierre It's not in place, as you say. That's expected to happen in December. At that point, there will be a minimum age for access to major social media platforms. The minimum age is 16. So anyone younger than 16 will theoretically not be allowed to use those platforms. And it's a pretty serious consequence for those companies. Fines of up to $50 million if they fail to take reasonable steps to keep them off. So, yes, the reason that we are here in the first place is because there's just this mounting community concern. You could even sort of say panic, really, particularly from parents who felt like they were worried about their kids online and, yeah, the harms that they're being exposed to there, whether that's cyberbullying, predatory behaviour from adults, exploitative behaviour, whether they're being exposed to things they shouldn't be exposed to, you know, violent content, sexually explicit content, and, yeah, what the net effect of that is for a young person. Sydney Pead OK, so the government is bringing in this ban. They've given themselves a 12-month buffer to figure out what they're going to do. But there's still so many questions around how they're actually planning to age-proof social media. So how are they trying to figure it out? What are they doing? Ange Lavoipierre So a big part of this puzzle is something called the Age Assurance Technology Trial, which has been going on for, gosh, eight months now, but about three, four months of that included field trials. So what they were doing is taking all these different systems, technologies, tools that check people's ages, 53 companies altogether, and they, yeah, were testing out the tech, not to work out which would be the tool, the specific tool that, you know, was the one that was used ultimately. It was really more of a temperature-taking, almost, of where this technology is up to. Is the tech fit for purpose in general? So more than 1,000 high school students have been trying out these tools in a trial that's been run by a consultancy firm called KJR. They've also been testing out the technology on adults, but the really crucial testing was done in classrooms on those young people. Sydney Pead Yeah, right. So you were able to get into some of these classrooms where they're testing out some of this tech that could be on the table. So how did that play out? What were they testing exactly? Ange Lavoipierre Ok well, they were testing a lot of estimation tools. Age estimation is, you know, we're taking a stab, it's a guess. And there are a few different types, but the main one is facial age estimation, right? So scanning the face and trying to work out from a person's face how old they are, which is... Yikes. Yeah, it's about as hard as it sounds. And the tech is really impressive, I have to say, and it has come such a long way. However, what we saw, particularly at John Paul II College in Canberra, when I went along to a session there, you saw this wild variation in the results people were getting. Just sometimes decades off what their actual ages were. School kid Oh, it gave me 29, that same one. I've been told my whole life I look about four years younger than I actually am. Ange Lavoipierre So you've got this iPad and you pop your face in front of it and you sort of follow the prompts and it'll spit you out an age. And some of these kids, they were, you know, maybe 15, 16, 17. They were getting results like 37. School kid 19, 37, 26, and I think it was 23 as well. OK, wow. So, yeah, it's pretty inconsistent. School kid 13. I just got 13. Went from 15 to 40 to 13. I'm getting younger by the minute. Sydney Pead OK, so that doesn't sound especially promising. So what kind of results are we actually seeing from this technology? How accurate can it be? Ange Lavoipierre So from those classroom trials, the preliminary data that was shared with the ABC by KJR, that consultancy firm, was that facial estimation was able to get a kid's age right within 18 months about 85% of the time. That's pretty impressive technology. 18 months is a pretty big margin when you're talking about 16-year-olds. And, you know, it's only 85% of the time. This is hundreds of thousands, if not more than, you know, a million people who are kind of in that margin of error there looking at the Australian population. Sydney Pead Yeah, OK. So obviously that facial age estimation technique doesn't seem perfect, but what other tech is being trialled? Is there anything else in the toolkit there? Ange Lavoipierre You know, there's a really interesting tool that looks at how your hand movements work. I didn't know this until I started reporting on this story, but there are ligaments in your hand that they age in a really specific and linear way. So you can tell a lot about a person's age based on how their hands move. There's also voice assessment. But again, these are all estimation. So they're never going to be perfect. Other avenues for checking a person's age, I mean, you can assess their online activity, who they're friends with, what they're interested in. But, you know, there can be some red herrings there. I mean, I don't know about you, but my algorithm, sometimes it seems to think that I'm like a 60-something-year-old man based on the ads that I'm served. So really the only ironclad way to check a person's age or verify a person's age is using hard ID, government-issued ID, something like a passport or a driver's licence. Sydney Pead Alright, so kids obviously may not even have a government ID. So giving that to a tech company or to the companies who might be checking that ID on behalf of tech companies, that's pretty fraught with, you know, security and privacy issues, right? Is that still being considered? Ange Lavoipierre So important to mention that people will not be forced to hand over government ID. And the reason for that is that there was an amendment to the law, a last-minute amendment when it was passing through Parliament back in November, that means that companies, social media companies will have to offer an alternative to that government ID. What it means is that because there has to be an alternative on offer, it means that that alternative is necessarily going to be just a little bit more gameable than that hard government ID. And we don't know what the design is going to be, but say, for instance, you know, you go to log on to Instagram or Snapchat and you might get a couple of offers. It might say, hey, you can prove it using ID, you can verify your ID with this now, or you can use facial scanning tech. Now, just say you're a young person who's keen to get around the ban, you're 14 or 15, but you'd like to still create an account. You're going to opt for the facial scanning, aren't you? Because you think, well, maybe I've got a shot of tricking that. And we know that there will be alternatives on offer to government issued ID because of that amendment to the law. That's going to be one to watch. Sydney Pead Right, yeah. Well, where there's a will, there's a way. For teens, obviously. The other big issue that the government's still trying to figure out is exactly which platforms are going to be included in this ban. And YouTube was exempt from it initially, but now it could be on the chopping block for under 16s as well. Just explain that for me. Ange Lavoipierre Yeah, so the law is really broad in the types of platforms it captures. And then within that, you've got carve-outs. So you can have a carve-out if you're, you know, primarily for educational purposes, for example. Now, we did see draft rules at the beginning of this year. And the interesting thing about the draft rules was that there was a carve-out for YouTube by name. The explanatory note for that was, well, we're hearing from teachers and parents and children that YouTube's a really valuable educational resource. Now, no doubt it is. The objection raised by a lot of YouTube's competitors, in fact, pretty much all of them, they kind of formed this rare united front and made these submissions to the government and contacted the media, including me, saying this is deeply unfair. And a lot of experts really agreed with them on that. And policy folk agreed with them on that, saying, well, YouTube has a lot of the same features that apparently really worry us about their competitors. So you get to the end of a video and then the next one will just play. Also, you've got algorithmically driven recommendation systems. And you have a lot of content on YouTube that is not fit for children. Now, what we saw recently was that the e-safety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, she came back to the government saying really unambiguously that YouTube should not be exempted. She made that point more fully at National Press Club. Julie Inman Grant, eSaftey Commissioner This wasn't just about YouTube. Our recommendation was that no specific platform be exempted because, as I said, the relative risks and harms can change at any given moment. Ange Lavoipierre She presented some research the office of the e-safety commissioner had done that surveyed more than 2,600 kids between the ages of 10 and 15. And they found that YouTube was the most frequently cited platform in their research, finding out where kids experience harm online. Julie Inman Grant, eSaftey Commissioner Alarmingly around seven in ten kids say they have encountered harmful content including misogynistic or hateful material, dangerous online challenges, violent fight videos and content promoting disordered eating. Sydney Pead So YouTube is obviously going to push back against this. It's claiming it's not a social media site. It's primarily a video streaming platform. But I guess we'll need to wait and see what the minister decides when she hashes out all the rules in the coming months as to who will be in and who will be out. But let's just take a step back because we're already in July, Ange. And the ban's supposed to be in place by December. That's less than six months away. I suppose the big tech companies are pretty keen to know what's going on too, because they're the ones who are going to be punished under these laws, as you say, not parents. So what are the tech firms saying? Ange Lavoipierre Yeah, to say they're keen to know what the plan is is the understatement of the century, I think. There does seem to be a degree of acceptance. You've seen a slew of announcements from those social media companies since the bill was passed into law, outlining all the different ways that, you know, they're trying to make their platforms safer for kids and build in more parental controls, build in more safety features. You can imagine, although I can't read minds, that they're hoping that that will mitigate the situation for them and perhaps help convince the government that they're able to cooperate and that the stick needn't be wielded so readily because $50 million fines per breach, that can really add up. Sydney Pead Well, the government is obviously very committed to this ban. There's a lot of public support for it, especially from worried parents. But what should parents realistically expect from these laws? Can the legislation really save kids from all the harmful material and the potential abuse and the online bullying? How realistic is this at this point? Ange Lavoipierre Everyone's saying, this isn't gonna be perfect. So yeah, I think it would be wise for parents to manage their expectations. We got some hints from Julie Inman Grant at the National Press Club. When she said something interesting, she said that we may still be building this plane a little as we're flying it. Interesting metaphor, because that's not really what you want for a plane. Luckily, this isn't a plane, but it does give us a sense that it may be a work in progress as it gets up and running. We are still in the dark to a large extent about what this ban's gonna look like. And we're less than six months out. We'll know more in the next few months once the minister makes decisions, and once social media platforms start telling us how it's gonna look in the wild. Sydney Pead Ange Lavoipierre is the ABC's National Technology Reporter. This episode was produced by Kara Jensen-Mackinnon. Audio production by Sam Dunn. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sydney Pead. ABC News Daily will be back again tomorrow. Thanks for listening.

ABC News
17-06-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Brain Rot: Is tech making your memory better or worse?
We're trusting tech with more tasks than ever — including the ones our brains once did. We're Googling things we used to know, taking screenshots of things we'll instantly forget, and hoarding all kinds of data we'll never check again. On this episode of Brain Rot: is tech giving your brain a holiday, or putting it out of a job? You'll also meet a guy who's turned the tables, by using AI to help recover his lost memories. Brain Rot is a five part series from the ABC's Science Friction about how tech is changing our brains, hosted by Ange Lavoipierre. Guests: Dr Julia Soares Assistant Professor, Mississipi State University Morris Villaroel Academic, Spain; Lifelogger Max Credits: Presenter: Ange Lavoipierre Presenter: Ange Lavoipierre Producer: Fiona Pepper Producer: Fiona Pepper Senior Producer: James Bullen Senior Producer: James Bullen Sound Engineer: Angie Grant This story was made on the lands of the Gadigal and Menang Noongar peoples.

ABC News
03-06-2025
- Health
- ABC News
Brain Rot: Is there any proof your phone is destroying your attention span?
Everyone seems to have a hunch that their phone is destroying their attention span, but is there any science to back it up? In episode one of Brain Rot, we're doing our best to focus on the topic of attention for a full 25 minutes — and find out what's actually happening in your brain every time your phone buzzes or dings. Is brain rot a real thing? Or just another moral panic? And how do you know when your own screen use has gone too far? Brain Rot is a new five part series from the ABC's Science Friction about how tech is changing our brains, hosted by Ange Lavoipierre. Guests: Anna Seirian CEO, Internet People Dr Mark Williams Professor, Macquarie University; Cognitive neuroscientist Michoel Moshel Clinical Neuropsychologist Registrar; Phd Candidate, Macquarie University Professor Marion Thain Professor of Culture and Technology, University of Edinburgh; Director, Edinburgh Futures Institute Credits: Presenter: Ange Lavoipierre Presenter: Ange Lavoipierre Producer: Fiona Pepper Producer: Fiona Pepper Senior Producer: James Bullen Senior Producer: James Bullen Sound Engineer: Brendan O'Neill This story was made on the lands of the Gadigal and Menang Noongar peoples. More information: Neuropsychological Deficits in Disordered Screen Use Behaviours: A Systematic Review and Meta‑Analysis - Neuropsychology Review, 2024. Do we have your attention? How people focus and live in the modern information environment - King's College London, 2022. Internet addiction-induced brain structure and function alterations: a systematic review and meta-analysis of voxel-based morphometry and resting-state functional connectivity studies - Brain Imaging and Behavior, 2023.

RNZ News
30-04-2025
- Business
- RNZ News
Cybercriminals have stolen almost 100 staff logins at Australia's Big Four banks, experts say
By Ange Lavoipierre , ABC Photo: Unsplash / RNZ Cybercriminals have stolen almost 100 staff logins from workers at Australia's biggest banks, putting those businesses at higher risk of mass data theft and ransomware attacks, according to cyber security researchers. The most serious risks arise from the fact that attackers could ultimately use those leaked logins to gain access to the banks' corporate networks, they warned. The cyber intelligence firm Hudson Rock told the ABC it found dozens of compromised staff credentials at both ANZ and Commonwealth Bank, and fewer than five at NAB and Westpac. "There are around 100 compromised employees that are related to those four banks," Hudson Rock analyst Leonid Rozenberg said. The Big Four banks all have protections in place to prevent stolen passwords from being exploited in this way. However, in a worst case scenario, those staff credentials could allow hackers to gain what's known as "initial access" and break into the banks' systems. "This is like the open gate," said \ Rozenberg, warning that once the hacker is inside, there was a lot more damage they could do, including installing ransomware and stealing massive troves of customer data. The almost 100 credentials identified by Hudson Rock belong to either current or former staff and contractors. All of them had a corporate email address with the ability to log into the same corporate domain, such as " or " researchers said. The credentials were stolen between 2021 and April 2025, using malware known as "infostealers" planted on employee devices, and have since been given away or sold on the messaging platform Telegram, the dark web, or both. Infostealer malware, as the name suggests, is a type of malicious software tailor-made to infect a device, harvest as much valuable data as possible, and deliver it directly to criminals. It overwhelmingly targets computers running on Windows. As well as passwords, infostealers can capture a wide range of data, including credit card details, cryptocurrency wallets and local files, as well as browser data such as cookies, user history and autofill details. Researchers have provided no evidence that the digital infrastructure of any of the banks is compromised - only that data, including corporate logins, has been stolen from devices used by their staff. Earlier this week, the ABC revealed that more than 31,000 banking passwords belonging to customers at the Big Four banks had been stolen using the same kind of malware, exposing those people to possible fraud. While the number of employee logins stolen by malware gangs is significantly smaller than the number of customers, the risk may be greater, according to researchers. "Technically, [attackers] need only one [log in] to do a lot of damage," Rozenberg said. A recent report from the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) warned of the potential for infostealer infections to lead to dire consequences for businesses. The ASD said stolen corporate credentials had already led to successful attacks on Australian businesses, although it did not name any victims. In the case of all four banks, Hudson Rock also found stolen credentials belonging to third-party businesses, presenting an extra layer of risk. "They're not only targeting the access to the bank. They're also targeting the services that this bank is using externally," Rozenberg said. In the case of CommBank, Hudson Rock reported more than 40 leaked third-party credentials, while researchers found more than 30 for Westpac, more than 100 for ANZ and more than 70 for NAB. "[Attackers] also know that if they get inside the JIRA, or Salesforce, or Slack, the communication system that is widely used by different companies … they can get a lot of sensitive information," Rozenberg said. Researchers chose to focus on the banks in this investigation, but warned the threat posed by infostealers was universal. "This malware can hit any business, in any industry and in any country," Rozenberg said. The use of infostealers has exploded in recent years, with a more than 200-fold increase in infections globally since 2018, according to Hudson Rock's analysis. The company found there have been more than 58,000 infected devices in Australia alone since 2021. Gaining access to a bank's corporate environment and staging a major attack is not as simple as just using stolen staff credentials to log in. "Most large enterprise organisations will have supplementary controls, in addition to a username and password," said Evan Vougdis from NSB Cyber, listing Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) as one example. For that reason, securing "initial access" is a specialised task in the cyber crime world, performed by "initial access brokers". "They shop around for infostealer logs that contain login passwords for large organisations or high-profile individuals," said Jamie O'Reilly from cyber security firm Dvuln. An initial access broker will search through big data dumps to find the right victim - ideally, a corporate employee working from home. "They'll look for things like VPN connections, screen sharing, software credentials," O'Reilly said. "If they can use a home device to jump into the corporate network, that's going to allow them to walk through the proverbial front door." If successful, the initial access broker can then sell that access to other criminals. "They'll take that [access] to a ransomware gang who can use that to then push ransomware malware throughout this enterprise company." Ransomware attacks have the potential to paralyse a business's operations by locking owners out of their own systems and stealing valuable data to leverage huge payments, which can stretch into the millions. Even when ransoms are paid, sensitive data may still find its way to the dark web, with businesses having no guarantee that the stolen data will be deleted. ANZ, CommBank, NAB, and Westpac each responded separately to the ABC to say they have a number of safeguards in place to prevent the unauthorised use of staff logins. A Westpac spokesperson said the bank couldn't disclose those measures in more detail for security reasons. NAB told the ABC it proactively scans cybercrime forums to stay on top of the problem. "We continuously monitor open and dark web sources for a wide range of potential threats, including compromised credentials," NAB Chief Security Officer Sandro Bucchianeri said. "Colleague and third-party credentials are changed regularly," he said. A statement from CommBank said the bank invested more than $800 million in combating cyber and financial crime last financial year. "We continuously adapt our defences based on real-time threat intelligence and regular testing of our security systems," a spokesperson wrote. - ABC