Safer Kids, Freer Kiwis.
Keep Kids Safe Online Without Sacrificing Freedom.
When I was 14, my dad handed me his brand-new iPhone 4. A Vodafone rep had convinced him it was a worthy upgrade from his trusty Nokia brick. Within days, he gave up on it and passed it down to me, a teenager with no clue how to conduct myself online. Within weeks, I’d racked up charges on his credit card buying songs and embarrassed my parents with a risky Facebook status that upset a church member (who, I might add, was often offended). Both times I was pulled up swiftly: access restricted, privileges revoked. I didn’t need a law to correct me. I needed parents.
That was 15 years ago. Since then, phones have become pocket-sized worlds. Social media has evolved from a digital noticeboard into something far more consuming. And with those changes, the challenges for parents and society have multiplied. So how should we respond?
New Zealanders want children to be safer online. At PILLAR, we share that aim, but how we pursue it matters. In a liberal democracy, freedom of expression and privacy are not luxuries; they are foundations. We need to find a solution that protects children without sacrificing freedom. And above all, we need to ensure our solution reflects that parents, not the state, hold the primary role in guiding their children.
In May, National MP Catherine Wedd proposed a bill to restrict social media access for under-16s. There is now an inquiry underway into the harms young New Zealanders encounter online, and the roles government, business, and society should play. Last week, I was surprised to receive an email inviting PILLAR to make an oral submission to the committee (not bad for our first week of operations). We were asked specifically to present solutions (which you can see below as well as our petition that you can sign!)
Current submitters have come to the table, inspired by the circus overseas, and put forward solutions like banning VPNs, restricting networks, fining platforms that host subjective “harmful but legal” content, and rolling out identity verification systems. Call me crazy, but I believe there’s a way we can protect children without sacrificing freedom and privacy. Some call that too hard, but we see it as not just possible, but necessary.
At this point I’d usually encourage you to imagine all the threats to privacy and freedom such lazy and thoughtless solutions could create, but I’ll spare you the mental exercise and show you real-world examples of why these approaches don’t work.
In the UK, age-check systems have created sweeping censorship and privacy risks while doing little to make children safer. Lawful speech now falls into subjective “harmful but legal” categories, inviting regulators to police opinion. This has resulted in 30 arrests per day on average for legal online activity. You would think if they truly wanted to protect children, they would start with the grooming gangs.
Just this week in Australia, a spokesperson for the eSafety Commissioner, speaking on platforms they would be looking to regulate, said: “Any platform eSafety believes to be age-restricted will be expected to comply, and eSafety will make this clear to the relevant platforms in due course.” Yes, you read that correctly: “Any platform eSafety believes...”
Which begs the question, what is social media?
Messaging apps, gaming platforms, video sites, and comment sections all overlap. Ban one, and kids migrate to another. No law could ever cover the shifting landscape without casting a net so wide it captures lawful speech in the process.
What these efforts have created overseas are surveillance systems: ID uploads, facial scans, and massive data collection schemes that put everyone’s privacy at risk. Parents have been sidelined and replaced by blunt state control. Unfortunately, for some that is no concern at all. Take the New Zealand-based advocacy group B416. In comments made this week, their co-founder criticised Meta, stating: “I would not recommend to any parent that they rely on these new limits that have been put in place.” Any parent who sees outsourcing their parental responsibilities to tech giants or the state as a solution should take a long hard look in the mirror and ask themselves some serious questions.
There’s no denying the issue at hand, but the question stands: what do we do about it?
Firstly, we acknowledge the unavoidable trilemma we face. Any age-restriction scheme will suffer from at least one of the following: easy workarounds by savvy teens, heavy friction for adults, or loss of privacy through intrusive ID checks. It has happened overseas, but New Zealand can do better.
Instead of building a speech-policing state, we should put families at the centre and target state action where it matters most, against clearly illegal harms such as child exploitation and grooming.
Practical, least-intrusive measures could make a real difference within a year:
Default family controls: require parental approval and linking on devices and app stores.
Digital resilience: build it into school curricula and provide short, accessible parent training.
Targeted enforcement: create one front door for complaints and integrate tools like StopNCII to block re-uploads of abusive material.
Were excited to be heading to parliament next month to present these solutions and make the case for protecting children online without sacrificing freedom.
But we could really use your help to drive the point home! Would you sign our petition? Your support will help us show the committee that kiwis was a balanced solution that doesn’t infringe on your speech and privacy rights!
The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act is clear: limits on rights must be justified, proportionate, and the least-intrusive option. Protecting children online should not come at the cost of mass surveillance, ID checkpoints, or state-policed speech.
Parents, not the government, must remain the first line of defence. With the right tools and targeted action, New Zealand can protect children, empower families, and preserve the freedoms that keep our democracy resilient.
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