The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, the program will start shortly, please find your seats.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: I want to thank the Government of Norway for such soaring music. I have been in every session this morning and it is uplifting and energizing. So I would like to welcome everybody to the IGF 2025 Global Youth Summit. This Summit is a key component of the IGF 2025 youth track, a part of the IGF 2025 High Level Leader Track.
It's organized under the motto, young leaders for multistakeholder governance of digital tech. It's part of a broader series of the youth tract activities at the IGF. The Summit was developed through bottom up consultations among designated representatives of the IGF host country, this way, Norway, obviously of the UN IGF Secretariat from various youth IGFs and other youth‑driven global Internet Governance initiatives such as the Internet Society youth Ambassadors program. The Summit serves as a multistakeholder intergenerational panel between the current and next generation of experts and leaders.
I'm going to introduce my co‑moderator, Jasmine Ko from the Hong Kong youth IGF. She will be moderating the second half where it's an open discussion with people in the room and online.
And I will introduce the panelists just as soon as we get the program under way fully. Jasmine, a few words.
>> JASMINE KO: Thank you very much, Lynn. So this is Jasmine Koh from Hong Kong, youth IGF coordinator. Adding a little bit more to the context of this Global Youth Summit is an effort by many of our youth colleagues several months to cocreate these sessions. So a little bit more.
This is, we are creating this topic because we noticed that the digital platforms have become very necessary to our daily life. Especially for young people we want to ensure a safe and age appropriate online experience emerging as well as global priority and Governments around the world are exploring regulatory frameworks aimed at protecting youth from harmful contact while trying to balance safety, security and protection of human rights and freedom.
So recent legislative efforts increasingly focus on the age verifications requirements for social media and content platforms. These laws could mandate digital platforms to implement robust age tracking systems to prevent users from a certain age from accessing inappropriate or harmful content. So after a very brief introduction of that we will cover in this session, I would like to give the floor to Lynn to introduce our first special guest.
>> LYNN St. Amour: My name is Lynn St. Amour Sanemor IGF MAG Chair 2016‑2019 and I was previously the President of the Internet Society.
It is now my great pleasure to welcome Mr. Li Junha for a welcome.
>> LI JUNHUA: Thank you, thank you for inviting me. Well, the young people from around the world, all distinguished participants, dear friends, good afternoon. Welcome all of you to the IGF 2025, the Global Youth Summit. Just a month ago in Riyadh, I recorded the IGF Youth Summit brought global attention to the importance of the AI education. Today was your bottom up consultation, you actually rightly set the tune by focusing on another issue that defines your generation, that is the regulations of the social media.
Social media is integral to our lives. So much that most of the youth have never known a world without it. Globally speaking over the 77% of the young people aged between 15 to 24 use the Internet, and the vast majority, more than 80% are active on social media.
While these platforms offer incredible opportunities to all of us, they were not necessarily viewed with your safety as a primary issue. The risks are real and pervasive. Over one third of young people in 30 countries reported being super bullied.
The youth data are harvested for the inappropriate targeted advertising and the impact of excessive screen time on mental and physical health is a growing concern and even a growing crisis.
In response, the many Governments are turning to solutions like age verification laws to protect the youth, particularly minors. This actually raises a critical question, how do we protect the young people online without compromising or limiting their freedom to participate fully in the digital world? I believe that the answer is in this room. Meaningful protection cannot be imposed from the top down. It must be cocreated and comanaged with young engagement.
Placing youth at the centre of the policy making is not just a good practice, but it is a moral imperative. Meaningful youth engagement is necessary to ensure the digital environments are safe, grounded in respect for young people's rights, and supportive of their healthy development.
The voices of the youth are essential to shaping policies that reflect the real experiences and needs. I'm very much encouraged to see senior Government leaders, representatives from the major social media platforms, key regulators and other stakeholders are here today and those who joined the WSIS+20 review and gathered in IGF 2025. Your presence signals a vital willingness to listen and more importantly to act on what you have heard.
The goal is very clear, to harvest, to have the smart rights respecting regulations that keeps young people safe, secure, and protected while empowering them to freely explore, express, and grow. The Summit is a critical stop in this global journey. The youth IGF track is building momentum from across the globe from the European IGF in France and African IGF in Tanzania to the future gatherings at the Asia‑Pacific IGF in Nepal, and the Latin American and Caribbean IGF.
This journey is about the building momentum and amplifying the youth leadership the Internet Governance. This global engagement is especially timely as this year marks the 20th review of the World Summit on the Information Society or WSIS + 20.
This is a pivotal opportunity to redefine digital governance for next generation. I sincerely urge you to actively share your insights from this track to the WSIS + 20 process. You are not just a part of the discussion, you are the essential to designing a safer, more equitable digital future reflecting the diversity of the practices, challenges, and aspirations.
I sincerely wish you a very productive and fruitful discussion. Thank you.
(Applause).
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. I would like to introduce our panelists, and, again, the first session of this is going to be some prepared remarks from them specific to some questions which have been posed and then we will have an open session the second part of the program.
So first, I would like to introduce Ms. Amina Ramallan who is deputy manager for the Nigeria Communications Commission, and she is a youth representative.
Second, Ms. Laura Rego from the Brazilian IGF. She is a student at the Federal University of Para and Research Fellow with the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development and youth representative. We will hear from the two of them first as we believe that that's really important in setting the stage for the rest of our interventions. Next, is Mr. Martin Ruby, Director for public policy for the Nordic countries, Meta. And we will be joined by Mr. Brendan Dowling, ambassador for cyber affairs and critical technology, Australia. Like so many of us this week, he was double booked in the session so he is making remarks in another room and will come after.
So with that, I would like to invite Amina, your remarks?
>> AMINA RAMALLAN: Good afternoon, everyone. So today I will be talking about the role of social media in the lives of young people, and platform policies if they align with the fundamental human rights and freedoms of young people.
So I'll start by taking us back to the first remark that was done, which was that 77% of young people globally use the Internet. And one third of young people in 30 countries have reported to be either cyber bullied or some other form of cybercrime.
So social media today is deeply interwoven in the lives of young people from their daily activities to being a platform for creativity, being a platform for innovation, job creation, peer connection, and even civic engagement. We have seen cases of young people championing governance, championing advocacy within their regions, using social media and succeeding about it. Young people remain dynamic and they remain at the forefront of social media.
Now, while we talk about these benefits that social media provides for young people while its interwoven with their life, they still remain at risk of, they still remain at exposure of certain risks. We have cybersecurity risks including child online risks. We have cyber bullying, we have cyber grooming. We have sextortion, and data privacy.
Now, it may not seem like it, but young people, it may seem like, okay, maybe someone is just playing a game. It might just be an innocent game, but young people remain at risk of their data being harnessed, of their data being used without informed consent.
We also have exposure to harmful content. There is this, for instance, sometimes these young people might not be the ones putting their data out there. It might be a family member. It might be a parent. There is a term today online called share renting.
Now, what that means is when a parent is out there uploading details of maybe their child or ward so that exposes the child to their data being out there without them even knowing. So it goes beyond not giving content to the platforms, but also not giving consent to the parent. To the aspect of does social media platform policies currently, do they align with fundamental and freedom?
I will say that while social media gives young people the avenue to express themselves and be dynamic, there are a lot of policies out there that need work because these policies are not evolving as fast as social media is evolving. For instance, social media platforms, they create some sort of, it might be like a UI effect. It might be like an Algeria effect. It creates Dopamine effect. For instance, you have unlimited scrolling. Now, in the case of unlimited scrolling, that is how the policy of the platform is, but then kids are at the receiving end because they become addicted they scroll and scroll and scroll.
You also have the case of the way Algeria works, targeted ads at children. As much as there are policies out there that say oh, if an account is registered to a child, maybe we will not present this ad to the child, but we still see child accounts having targeted ads. Also another thing is that as young people are at the forefront of social media, they are also at risk of not having, for instance, while the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child protects from harmful content, however, we see compliance across regions, compliance across the world is lacking in some places.
Another thing is also that, for instance, social media remains the platform for young people to also have peer connection and community connection, but that also puts them at the risk of coming in contact with malicious users.
So I would like to just round up by saying while policies increasingly reference human rights principles, privacy, freedom of expression, protection, they often struggle in practice to balance these rights. We see issues of enforcement. We see issues of transparency. A lot of times these policies are not transparent enough or they are not consistent enough, and global consistency remains a problem. Especially in a world today where we have different countries, they have their different policies. So sometimes harmonizing those policies for the good of the child remains an issue.
I'll just round up by saying that one of my recommendations is that social media platforms should integrate, you know, safety by design. They should ensure that rights based design or regulation is their priority. Integrating human rights impact assessment of product design especially for youth futures. For instance, turning off addictive features, like unlimited scrolling, turning off addictive features like likes. Regulators also should mandate age appropriate design. They should be stronger enforcement and global cooperation, and then digital literacy.
Awareness cannot be overstated. There isn't anything like too much awareness. It might seem like every day we sit down and talk about the same thing, but it's a lot out there. The only thing is to scale up their awareness. Maybe ten years ago we were talking about how do you command social media but we are talking awareness on how to identify deep fake if that is even possible, how to know the difference between what is AI and what is real.
And then to wrap up, I will say platforms should also consider if a child, if an account being opened is a child account, there should be some sort of survey or I don't want to call it a course, but almost like a questionnaire to ensure that the person opening the account understands what they opened the account for, understands the risk that they may be exposed to and tell them, okay, if you come across this risk, this is what you need to do. This is how you get it out of your feed. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you for your very pertinent comments, Amina. We will hear from Ms. Laura Rego. We are interested from a youth perspective what is a good way to make sure that the age checks being proposed on some social media really work and that they help keep young people safe from harmful content.
>> LAURA REGO: Good afternoon. I will express my gratitude for the invitation of being here. I'm Laura Rego, I stand here as a fellow member of the youth program from the CGI, the BR.
I'm also a youth Young woman from the Amazon region from the City of Belin. I'm a law student and I'm very worried with the online safety of the youth community. As a matter of fact, age verification is one of the various important steps in trying to create a healthy environment for children and teenagers in the digital space. Although it's not enough by itself.
Despite newer solutions and tracking user age more accurately like asking for a birth certificate or using facial, and I would like to speak about such case we had in Brazil there was coordinated by the national authority of data protection and request made by institute Elena that we had a problem of TikTok. Why?
Because you could access any of their content just by the link, and you could see anything, any video without checking the age of the person who was accessing this content. And the authority of data protection our national authority, they got to make TikTok as for the account of the person who has access to the content. So they could do the age verification and it was very good for the children.
Protecting the young from the harmful content goes by building stronger policies in rating content and involving a multistakeholder network of shared responsibility. Talking about Brazilian life, the institute of children and teens assures as a principle the best interest of minors and the integral protection must be guaranteed by the whole society with no space for exclusive responsibility of the parents.
This means the final user and his wellbeing should be with no regards protected by the companies that provide the service. From a youth perspective, especially from a country that 83% of the children between 9 and 17 already have their own account on social media as research relies. Unilateral solutions have been shown to be flawed urging for participation of the most affected, the children and the teens.
We have the motto "Nothing About Us Without Us." That means to better comprehend the necessity and the pain of these groups, they should be called to the spaces of discussion, qualified and heard.
In a way the solutions could bring safety while engaging our next generations of leaders. Thank you.
(Applause).
>> MODERATOR: I thank you, Laura. I would like to introduce Mr. Brendan Dowling. He was double booked for the session but he has arrived just in time. Ambassador for cyber affairs Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for the Government of Australia.
Specifically, Brendan, we would like you to talk about the Australian Parliament's recently endorsed age verification for social media use. It's been a few months now, how do you see the impact of the decision thus far and what are any challenges or successes you might have noted?
>> BRENDAN DOWLING: Late last year the Australian Government announced we would be working towards restrictions on the use of social media is by people under 16. The implementation will happen later this year, so the current development of the scheme is under way and going through a consultation process.
What drove this measure is a sense that social media platforms were not created for children. They were not created generally with safety in mind. In fact it's been years and years of pressure from Governments and civil society to have social media companies actually take the safety of their users seriously.
And a growing concern that platforms not designed for use by children are still being used by children, that current mechanisms for age assurance adopted by social media platforms are ineffective, often not developed particularly well, and the way that the platforms are designed to be exploitive of people's attention, to share material that is harmful, that for all of the concerns being raised by the community, the response of social media companies has been lack luster at best, disingenuous at worst.
So the measure is driven by a sense of frustration at the level of inactivity of social media platforms and the feeling that the community in Australia expects Government to do something to better protect its children. Of course, what you do is the really difficult question that we and many Governments are grappling with. What we are looking for is a solution that is flexible, that is designed by some consultation with the community including with people who are under 16 years old that is not perfect.
So let's not pretend there is any age verification solution that is going to be a perfect measure to be all things to all people. Part of the aim here is it is a normative shift to create in the culture and in the community an understanding that these services are not appropriate for kids who are under 16 years old. It is also to create some friction in the system to say it should not be easy for you to circumvent whatever measures are in place on social media platforms to prevent use by children.
It's part of a broader suite of measures. For years many of you would know the Australian Government has been very active in requiring platforms to adopt online safety mechanisms, requiring by law measures to limit the spread of harmful content. But the end result is we do think there needs to be some sort of mechanism. What we will be doing is requiring platforms to take greater effort to restrict the use of their platforms by children. So this requirement is not a ban that applies to children or their parents, it applies to the companies.
The wording of the legislation says that companies should ‑‑ now I'm going to forget exact wording but essentially should take best efforts to adopt age verification measures. This means that there will be flexibility in the measures that they use. There won't be the prescription of one single tool that should be used. It means there can be flexibility in the arrangements.
We are currently going through a process of working with industry on what mechanisms can be used. There will be expectations about respecting rights and privacy through the use of these mechanisms. The Government has already said that we will not be using a digital ID process. We will be looking at alternative ways to verify age. So the whole aim here is design a system that's flexible, that's consulting with industry, but that ultimately does give effect to the promise to that children should not be using social media platforms because of the demonstrable harms they have been facing. The actual implementation of the measure as I said will come later this year, so there are more details to be figured out before December 2025, but that's a pathway we are on at the moment.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Now, to wrap up our panelists with quite a big lift in front of them is Mr. Martin Ruby. Again, Director of public policy for Nordic countries, Meta. And specifically we would like to know how you believe all stakeholders, particularly social media companies can work together to ensure that age checks on social media are effective everywhere so that all young people across the world are safe.
>> MARTIN RUBY: Thank you, and thank you for having me. I hope the sound is okay here, otherwise, flag it somehow.
Well, I already agree with a low that have been said here, not everything, but a lot that has been said but we can discuss it over the next hour or so. And to your question on the responsibility, who has the responsibility? I think is there is only the classic pretty boring answer to that is that there are sort of a lot of stakeholders that need to be on board in order to solve this. It's a, age verification online is super difficult, and I agree with the Ambassador in what he said that there is no perfect solution out there, and if there was, I think we have been forced to put it to use years ago.
So it is a very difficult one, but I'll spend my couple of minutes here on saying a little bit about our approach at Meta. We have a two‑step approach. One is trying to keep kids safe online from the content they need on our platforms, which means that we are, we have developed over the years many, many tools. We are learning every day, every week, every month we are learning how are the trends, what are the youth doing, what new technologies are there? So we have to sort of work with, so that means we more than 50 tools that are put in place to increase safety for kids online. And then the biggest one maybe is the newest one, the teen accounts that we rolled out gradually over the world on InstaGram first and later on Facebook.
Teen account means that everyone between the age of 13 and 18 are put into different buckets depending on their age, and that means that there are limits to what they can see. There are limits to who can contact them. There are a lot of different sort of protections around them. And for the youngest of those teens they cannot remove those without parents doing it. The bigger ones have freedom to change settings.
That's what we are trying, definitely hard. We have no interest, someone said something indicating we have an interest in having bad, harmful content in our platforms. We definitely do not have interest in that and we want to protect the kids online. The next big thing is age verification because in order to be able to do the teen's account as I mentioned putting kids into the or the teenagers into the right buckets so they are protected well, we need to have a good solid age verification. That is super difficult.
It's easy if there are no privacy concerns it would be easy because we could ask the people to send us personal data and we can figure out how old they are, but I don't think there is a big interest in the world in setting Meta or other big platforms a lot of extensive personal data. I think there is a general opinion that we have enough. So we need to find the right plans between the privacy and the safety here.
And that makes it complicated. And then I think someone like us, big machinery, we have a pretty good system in place, not perfect, of course, we can discuss that, but someone like us and Google and some of the other big ones we have big machinery, big muscles, we have good age verification systems in place. But, again, across the Internet, across all services, also ours there is a need for a better one. The model we suggest is that two things, we actually want to see regulation on this. It's very rare that you hear something like that, maybe from a player like us, but we want to see regulation on age verification coming our way.
We are pushing it actively in the EU where I'm working and the secondly, we are saying that the model we suggest that to tell to make it work efficiently would be to do it on the device level. That means in the App Store.
That means on this one.
So instead of going app by app, our number shows that teenagers are using more than 40 different apps. Looking at my two girls at home, I think that's right. We think it's a good idea to do it on this one because there are only two apps, two, basically there are two operating systems in the world. Android and iOS, put it there, so that means in practical terms when I set up the phone with my daughter in Denmark where I live, it says children are between 8 and 9 years old when they get their first smartphone. That's probably true. That means an 8‑year‑old doesn't go and buy their smartphone. It could be a used one or a new one, but then a parent are sitting there next to the kid setting up the phone and they put in the age. Our proposal is just that that has to be binding by law that when that age is in that kid can only download stuff that fits that age unless the parent makes a different, an exception to it when they are like 14, you can say, okay, that's okay. That means my daughter, when she was like 12, she could not download InstaGram or SnapChat or whatever.
So the technology is there. We find it to be a golden moment to do it like that. We can discuss it in a minute. I don't want to spend more time, but it's an easy way to do it we feel and we feel it could cut across all countries in Europe as we are right now where we discuss it most actively I think, also in the U.S. but across a lot of countries and a lot of L of apps in an efficient way.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. There are many things I specially would like to follow up on with the panelists, but we are trying to keep our moderation very light. This next session is the time for both you here in the room and online participants to ask your questions either of the panelists or start a discussion amongst yourself if you want to follow on from something some other individual has said. There are mics at two ends of the room, and someone who has kindly volunteered to be a roving mic, I will turn the floor over to Jasmine now.
>> Thank you very much, lane, please be reminded each speaker can have up to two minutes for your interventions. You can comment. You can also ask questions to the panelists. So if you are ready, please feel free to use the mics on two sides of the room, and then we will also be tracking the Zoom loon for online participants would like to pose a question as well the.
>> AUDIENCE: My name is Larry Magid, CEO of ConnectSafety, a U.S. based NGO. And full disclosure, we do have support with Meta and, Amazon, Google, open AI and many of the companies involved in this.
I guess this question is to anybody, but specifically the gentleman from Australia. There is no doubt that social media like bicycles and basketballs and just about anything in the world can harm people. There are dangers, but there is also no doubt based on research that there have been many benefits to young people from social media.
In fact, there are children alive today that might not have been alive had it not been for social support systems that they were able to get on social media when they reached out when they were in some kind of crisis. There are children and adults, but LGBTQ children, for example, in communities where they are ostracized, and they have been able to get a life line through social media. And there are examples where mental health has actually improved as a result of social media.
So while I agree with you that just like bicycle riding it's very important to have education, wear helmets, obey the rules of traffic, but we don't ban people under 16 from riding bicycles even though more people have died in bicycle accidents than have died from social media.
So I'm curious what, do you have any concerns about the harm you may be doing as well as the benefit, I'm not acknowledging that there is no benefit, but the harm you may be doing by keeping some young people from social media that could actually literally save or at least improve their lives and their mental health?
>> I think all public policy is about bouncing risks and benefits, comparing social media to bicycles is a stretch. Bicycles are not designed to exploit the attention and to target marketing towards children. I'm sure there are situations where social media platforms have provided those types of benefits you have talked about, however, I think across the board the research and evidence pointing to the exploitive and predatory practices of social media platforms that do target children, the harms that have been documented over years and years in broad reaching ways of attention spans, of cyber bullying, of access to harmful content, when we look at the balance of those measures, my view is that those platforms are not designed for children. They are not designed to benefit the health and wellbeing of children. And in fact, the harms are very well documented now.
So I'm not saying I disagree with your point, I think it's a valid point and this is something that we do see coming up in the consultation process we are going through. We do hear the range of perspectives, but on balance the harms that we see in a widespread way through our community warrant this type of action from Government public policymakers.
>> MODERATOR: We can have the next speaker on taking the mic, please.
>> AUDIENCE: Hi, everyone, this is Vivek from Nepal. My perspective would be from the developing nations. So the youth and children from developing nations aren't aware of their rights whether it is the exploitation and the platform, are they being abused or not? In developed countries somehow in courses in school they are taught these are the do's and don'ts in the platform. But in the case of developing nations, there are not any curriculums where these things are the things you can do in the platforms. These are the good things. These are the bad things.
So my question is to Martin from Meta, how is this balance for the youth, especially the under aged to get access to the platform. Is the simple data enough or there should be some AI platforms like face recognition or something that this can be balanced.
Also limitation be multi‑ lingual when you go back to the country, so are able to read what they are going through in their own language. The platforms or whatever the content that are posted is in their language but are the terms and conditions and all of those other things going to multi‑ lingual? Thank you.
>> MARTIN RUBY: Thank you. Just come back if I don't reply to it all, but the sound is not perfect.
I think on your question on the age verification, how to do it, use AI, local language, whatever, I think, I mean, again, our idea is to do it on the device level. Today we use AI actually in the sense that if young users, for instance, on, if a 13‑year‑old suddenly changes their age and says they are 23 instead, we actually ask them to send a picture and then send it to our third party that we use, and we also use other kinds of technologies to try and see if we can detect age properly.
But going forward our main proposal is that we think that we should do it when you set up the phone because that is the entry point by far the most instances. So when you set up the phone, that is when we think that you put in the age, and when you have done that, it should be binding from there on. And then the parent is in control of what you download, and then they can make exceptions, et cetera, for the bigger, for the older teens, not the youngest ones.
And I think that's probably our way, what we find to be the easiest way forward. I don't know if that answered your question.
>> AMINA RAMALLAN: If you put on the headphones, the sound is clearer. I think what the speaker was saying, especially from the Developing Countries, I come from a developing country. The percentage of 8 to 9‑year‑olds owning a phone is very, very low. So a lot of times you find that children maybe use a phone that is to a sibling or parent to say, okay, I use your phone. I download maybe an app. I download social media. Sometimes the parent may not know that the kid has downloaded the app on the phone and using social media on it. So, yes, safety by design is good, yes, starting from the OEMs and making sure once a phone is set up for a child it cannot download certain apps but beyond that, especially for Developing Countries where you don't usually have young children owning their own smart device, I think the responsibility still falls back to the apps that they are downloading.
So in the event that a child downloads these apps either through a phone set up for an adult or belongs to their parents, what are the policies, what are the steps that are put in place to ensure that when that happens it's a child because at that point the child is not using any form of verification on the app. The phone belongs to an adult, automatically creates a profile. So I wanted to add. I think that maybe makes your question clearer. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thanks Martin and Amina, we will go to the onsite first, and then we will go back to the Zoom. Please.
>> AUDIENCE: Hi. Name is Jovana from Brazil. I'm from the same program that the Brazilian youth program held by CIBGR. I'm trying to look at discussion as asking age verification for what purpose? And I think here we are talking about age verification for the purpose of tailoring an experience for kids and teens. So I would like to ask all of you actually the general question and if you could all comment, I would be really happy. How do you think this experience should change in terms of advertisement because I think we can all fairly agree that the way ads work online are part of the reason why social media can become so toxic for kids and teens. So how should this experience be different in when it comes to online ads and advertisement? Thank you.
>> MARTIN RUBY: The measure that Australia is putting in place is not about shaping user experience, it's about saying children under 16 should not have a social media account. So we know that age verification can be used for that exact purpose and in fact I think a lot of technology companies have gotten quite sophisticated in the way that they can target ads and shape the user experience which brings its own set of issues and risks, but for us this measure is about restricting access to having a social media account not changing the user experience.
>> Can I comment on the Ambassador's point here. I think the problem is also as one of the previous speakers said the problem is that under 16, I mean, I think there is a big difference between someone with the age of 8 and 15. I mean, I have two daughters age 13 and 16, I would say that there is a big difference. I would say that removing the opportunity for a 15‑year‑old to communicate via social media with friends and family, whoever, and follow interests there or explore stuff, I think that is a big thing to do. I think my daughter would definitely agree if she was sitting here. I think it's a big thing to do.
I think sometimes I'm glad that we is have a lot of youth in this room because the young people's voice are getting lost in these debates. I think it's always a bit fearful what is being debated and I can just say when I sometimes talk to my 15‑year‑old, now 16‑year‑old daughter about these things, I think she is, her generation I think is just in a different place. I think they are just getting ‑‑ I think it's a very ‑‑ and I totally appreciate what you are saying that social media is not built for small kids. That's true.
And an 8‑year‑old shouldn't be running around on social media, but I think a 15‑year‑old saying that they are not allowed at all on social media, I think it's a big thing. I just want to make that point. I owe that to my daughter, I would say.
>> MODERATOR: Thanks Ambassador Martin. So now we move back on. Aditya, you have a question. You can unmute yourself and speak.
>> AUDIENCE: Yes, so I'm Aditya with the dynamic teen coalition and my work has focused on international social media bands targeting teens. These measures will have been justified as protecting youth have been shown to disconnect us from critical support networks and educational resources for marginalized teens and I think a gentleman previously brought this up as well. My question is how can the Australian Government ensure youth safety without turning to blanket bans that silence our voices? And when will we finally have a meaningful seat at the table in shaping digital policies that affect our lives daily? Thank you.
>> Access to educational resources is not what this measure is targeted about. Access to the online environment is not what this is targeted about. It is specifically targeted to social media accounts created by children under the age of 16. So this does not affect access to YouTube, for instance, as a way to access educational videos.
The voice of youth is important. That is part of the consultation process. I would say that as part of a lot of the consultation, not only parents are raising concerns about the impact of social media on wellbeing, on mental health, on stress levels, on sleep, on attention spans, these are issues being raised by kids as well.
There are kids in Australian schools who are initiating limited access to phones during the education day. So I don't think we should be seen as an adults versus kids type of measure. This is about a general community sense that the documented harms to all of those areas of brain development at that age are warrant public policymakers stepping in and taking steps to address those.
So the online environment has become an important part of our lives. It is an important part of healthcare. It's an important part of education.
But social media I think on balance has far more harms to the wellbeing of children that has taken the step. That's not at the exclusion of people's voices, it is not at the exclusion of the participation of youth. It's not about silencing youth. It is about doing something drastic, and it's a big step, I agree with my colleague from Meta, it's a big step, but it's a step that the Australian Government has felt compelled to take because we don't believe that the protections that have been put in place by social media companies for children's wellbeing have been adequate or sufficient.
So this is the role of Governments to step in protect community interest.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you Ambassador. Since we have questions from the Zoom, we will go for two in persons intervention and then we will move back to online. So, please.
>> AUDIENCE: My commentary is that social media is absolutely not for children but it's also bad for young adults if they are 16, 18 or even 20 because their frontal lobe hasn't been developed yet and so they don't fully know how to use social media for good purposes.
And a good step to that would be is introducing some kind of education course to social media that would be obligatory so that every person that has a social media account on Facebook, InstaGram or TikTok, that they would receive every couple of months some kind of education course on how to use social media for good purposes and to teach the parents or to give them more information about what harm social media could give to their children. And what is your thoughts on that?
>> MARTIN RUBY: I'm totally in favor of increased digital skills and increased digital literacy. I think it should be part of schooling that you, because in social media, the Internet is not going to way. It's there. You can try to squeeze out a few apps, but then the young people will move to other apps, they will move to other places on the Internet.
They will probably move to darker places I would say so I think you have to be very careful when we go and do these things, but I totally agree that there is no way around that we have to learn our kids better to what they see, what they meet, how to behave on the Internet and on social media, of course.
And adding on that one, I think, and that's when we talk about who has the responsibility. We have a big responsibility, regulators have the responsibility as I suggested a couple of times on what I think they should do. And I think that parents, I mean, me as a parent, I also have responsibility in terms of there is no tech company in the world that can fix this. There is no regulator that can fix this on their own.
I mean, if I don't care what my daughters are doing, it's going to be very difficult to fix it from a regulator or from a tech platform. So I mean, everyone has to be responsible about this thing to make it work, but digital skills, I think is absolutely the basis. I agree totally on that.
>> MODERATOR: Anyone want to add on that?
>> BRENDAN DOWLING: We have seen remote connectivity reach some of the remote populations in the world. We do extensive work in the Pacific ensuring last mile connectivity, connectivity into remote villages. A real challenge we are seeing in communities in places like the Pacific is that connectivity, access to mobile devices, access to online platforms is reaching communities before digital literacy gets there.
I agree this is a collective challenge. This is something we need to work on to build up digital literacy to understand what the appropriate use of social media platforms are. We have kids accessing devices and social media in communities where parents have had no actual lived experience. It becomes very difficult for them to work with their children on understanding the risks and potential harms of the social media environment.
So there is a real challenge to, with connectivity should come online safety and digital literacy. I think collectively when a Government and industry and civil society perspective we haven't done a good enough job of that, and now we are trying to make up for lost ground.
But actually these things go hand in hand from the outset.
>> MODERATOR: One more in person intervention.
>> AUDIENCE: Hi. My name is Cosama I work at UCL in London's digital speech lab. I was previously with the U.K. safe for Internet Center for five years.
I have a couple of questions, a little bit more on the digital literacy angle but flexibility of a blanket ban. I know both from Meta and also the Australian Government, you have sort of taken different substances on how flexible we should be in terms of allowing young people to use social media.
On sort of one hand, lacks flexibility, I'm wondering if we don't want ‑‑ if we wanted flexibility in the legislation and not just one way of enforcing these bans, how do we ensure the legislation is strong enough? And then if we don't want a ban, which I'm sure is more than Meta to an extent, then what more specifically can we do on digital literacy given the platforms are the ones that facilitate the harms by just being the platform that it happens on, not that it's necessarily their fault but it's where it happens. So looking for more detail there.
>> BRENDAN DOWLING: It's a tricky question, when you design policy figuring out how much flexibility is the right amount of flexibility. Balance is always a debate. It's always an argument involving all members of the policy community.
So I don't think we will get things exactly right. The test which I couldn't remember earlier that we often use in Australian law is take reasonable steps. Now, what does reasonable mean in the sort of situations? Often it comes to a community test. Do we think this is reasonable? It can then be challenged in court? So there is push and pull over what is the right level of flexibility are industry players abusing that flexibility. This is something we see play out in a range of areas of public policy. I think for us as we covering the panel, this is a new area of policy making for many Governments around the world. It is a new area of technology development. For me that means more flexibility is the right approach at this moment. There are a range of options that companies already look to adopt that are being developed. Let's let those options proliferate. Let's see what works best, and oftentimes we then get coalescence around more effective tools.
So I think starting flexibly is better than starting prescriptive and trying to pull that back. As I said, take companies will have the expectation they will take reasonable steps. They then have the flexibility to figure out what the right approaches are, will embed in the rules the protection of privacy and digital rights, noting that that is a sliding scale which not everyone will be satisfied with the results where it lands, but being more flexible in the early stage.
>> MODERATOR: We have one question from online, from Mahmud, the question is how do you think child and teens can be included in the design of policy for digital social media platforms?
>> AMINA RAMALLAN: I will start by saying in 2020 when the pandemic hit, the ITU developed the child online protection guidelines for it industry, the policy, children, patients, teachers and what not. One of the recommendations was for the, for Member States to adopt and adapt and localize and make it, make it relatable for the children within the region.
So one of the things we did in Nigeria, it was the pandemic. Everybody was at home. People were not easily reachable. But we found a way to virtually reach children, find out what the ideas are, what they think of the policy as it is, what they would like to see as different and what else do you think should be included that is not currently included as children.
So I will say there isn't just one strict way to include children in policy making. You just have to do it. Nations, organisations, platforms, international corporations need to just put children at the forefront because young people are not just like the leaders of tomorrow, they are the leaders of today. Governance is becoming younger. They are not, today they are on social media, they are on Internet. No matter how we try to discourage, how we try to paint this bad picture, but they do see the benefits when they remain online.
So there is no ages. Include them. Make sure their voices are heard because they are actually the majority users of these platforms, and these policies are made to protect them. These policies are made to make sure that their use of the social media on the Internet, that they are not being exposed to any harm.
So just include them and make sure their voices are not lost in conversations.
>> LAURA REGO: I agree with you, and I think it is about awkward situations and about digital literacy too. So we have to have this concern of inclusion now so we can hear these voices. And when we hear them, we can make these policies better by knowing what's really the problem because it's very easy for us to look and think, I know what the problem is, but we don't have the mentality of a teen who is in various scenarios being the first ones to experiment this technology and the technology are experimenting on the children.
We can't have this. We must hear them.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, so coming back to the cue, please. ‑‑ queue, please.
>> AUDIENCE: My name is Amy. I have been a digital Ambassador for online safety for children for six years with the U.K. Internet centre. I have a follow‑up question for Laura and Amina as well as Brendan as well. My follow‑up question is who do you think holds the most responsibility when it comes to making sure children are at the forefront of these discussions about social media and the uses of it, and for Brendan, I know you said there is a lot of work to go in the legislation that you are trying to roll out, but have you had any thought process towards how you ensure that social media companies actually use the most effective verification method rather than a verification method that works but isn't necessarily the most effective for them. Thank you.
>> LAURA REGO: As a multistakeholder effort we can name one sector who should include these children. Brazil,, for example, in 2025 it released a guide for safe use of Internet for children, and this guide, it has a multistakeholder view that points, for example, what enterprise should do, what the parents should do, what the children should do, what the Government should do, and it's not a closed answer, but we have some guidelines, some principles, and I think discussion is the first step.
>> AMINA RAMALLAN: Just to echo what she said it's a multistakeholder approach because where the responsibility of one stakeholder stops, the responsibility of the next stakeholder begins. When I drop off my child at school, my responsibility to ensure they are safe online stopped there now. The teachers pick up. When the child maybe goes out on an excursion somewhere, the responsibility of the school stops and then maybe it's now the responsibility of say it's a Government event, so it's a multistakeholder effort. There isn't one stakeholder that is more responsible for child online safety than the next.
>> BRENDAN DOWLING: A couple of ways we will be monitoring that, one is we have a commission called E‑safety commission which is responsible for regulating online safety issues. Part of these measures will be transparency around the use of tools, reporting from companies about how they are using the tools, what effectiveness there is.
That is something that our regulated commission will be taking responsibility for. If we see that the most effective tools are not being used, then there will be the ability to monitor and say, well, these are not reasonable steps. Now, easier said than done. Monitoring the effectiveness of these types of tools is not necessarily going to be easy, but we will rely on the transparency of platforms to actually work with Government on making this work.
This is where I think community expectations are really important. As the social norm on the use of social media platforms, there will be community expectations about how social media platforms go about doing this, and there is always the community holds platforms accountable for what they commit to doing as well as Government regulator. So I think between those measures, we will have pretty good visibility of what happens, how effective it is. I lot of eyes are on the measures. Australia is not the only country but one of the early countries to adopt these. We will have a lot of attention to the tools that get used.
>> MODERATOR: Back to the queue here, please.
>> AUDIENCE: My name is Walter from the Netherlands and I want to share a different point of view. I would say it's part of victim blaming because it's not only about the content that's damaging youth, but it's also the platform itself. Many of the things Amina described are not part of the content, but actually the platform that contents is hosted on. I think companies like Meta created the perfect cigarette and now we are trying to take them away from our children. So I would request the Ambassador of Australia, please, regulate the platforms, not the users. Do not take the cigarette away from the children, but take the nicotine out of the platform.
And I would like to add to that there are alternatives to these addictive platforms. Platforms are based on public values and not on profits so let us not confuse innovation with progress and choose platforms that actually contribute to human progress and keep youth and parents safe.
>> BRENDAN DOWLING: I think that's an important point, I think we will look back on this era and the last 15, 20 years as an era that we regret in how these technologies evolved being used, practices that were acceptable ten years ago by social media platforms will not age well when we look back in history. You use the cigarette example, I think it's an interesting analogy, the knowledge of the harms and the failure of companies to actually do something to protect the wellbeing of users. I think has been, light has been shown on that but I think will continue to be a feature of how we understand the use of this technology. I would say in our legislation, the obligation is on companies. It's not about banning kids. It's about companies taking reasonable steps to restrict access, but I think your point is an interesting one that will continue to play out as we better understand what some of the harms of the way that social media is used are more apparent. We might look back and say there are further measures that need to be adopted here.
>> MARTIN RUBY: I think I probably need to respond a little bit on that one. Just saying that I actually agree with a lot of what the Ambassador is saying on I think we’ll learn a lot from these years in terms of the technology. And I think we are maturing, and there might also be all of the technologies used ten years ago that you just said now that will not be looking good five years from now or now even. That's probably true.
So I mean, we are definitely, I mean, we have billions of people using our platforms, totally voluntarily every day because people like to use them. And I like to use them.
And I think there is something, we are gloomy in here today, we are looking at the bad things which is totally fair, but there is actually 99.99 whatever of the content that is on the platforms and probably also on competitor platforms are totally normal borrowing, funny, interesting, learning, whatever, content. I think we just, and then there is the bad stuff we need to find and we need to get rid of.
Are we always good at finding it fast enough? No. We can discuss that, we try, but that's a different discussion. Just saying that I think maybe we are getting a bit gloomy on what the Internet and social media actually contributes and can just one final point on that is if you look at young people, I think young people actually, they go there because they, and I think the research is backing up what I'm saying there, is they go there because they find a lot of connections there. They actually engage with their friends and families there. They are increasing their wellbeing when they are there. That's also research backed up because they go in there and it's an extension of their social life. And there is problematic stuff and we need to get rid of that. There is also extensive views and we need to get rid of that. But we should have some proportion in the debate.
>> MODERATOR: So in the interest of time, can we kindly ask to receive two questions at once so after the laid Y. the gentleman can go directly.
>> AUDIENCE: I will try to be quick. I am both young and old enough to remember social media like My Space, and Facebook and InstaGram without algorithms or personal ads. And so we are having conversations here about access and social media being harmful to children, but what I feel like we haven't addressed is the economic models that have developed in the mid-2000s that is an economic model of attention which is harmful for children.
Social media in itself can have positive benefits, but what I want to know is what is being done on the regulation point of view, and also the platform point of view to address the economy of attention.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you very much. I am the chairperson of the South African youth Internet Governance Forum. I think the gentleman before me had touched on this point. We recently hosted South African Internet Governance Forum before the national Internet Governance Forum in South Africa in April, and this discussion was quite a touching topic, especially amongst the young people that attended there.
So it basically touched on as we build these frameworks for age verification and online safety, are we really asking the right question? Shouldn't we be focusing less on verifying the age of the users and more about verifying the responsibility and the accountability of platforms profiting from young people's data and attention? So how do we shift the conversation from regulating the youth to regulating the digital power structures around them because as the gentleman mentioned, why are we talking about the cigarette, yet the cigarette is being supplied by the digital owner.
So I think instead of over regulating the Internet and over regulating social media, let's look at the wholesalers of these platforms and regulate them instead of focusing on the users. Thank you so much.
>> AUDIENCE: So you may want to keep your response to within a minute if possible.
>> BRENDAN DOWLING: The social media changed to maximize the, as the phrase you used which I think is an excellent phrase the economic model of attention. Anyone who has been on X recently, I think, would be hard pressed to say that the way it sucks your attention in has any social health benefit whatsoever. It's become about maximizing engagement. That's how platforms have monetized. I think that's a certificate question. This is a hard area of public policy making. I think it's one we are getting more tuned to. It's one we are paying more attention to. There is greater transparency. I don't think there are super easy answers to the questions, but part of the reason I work in the field is because it's an area of public policy where we are grappling with some of the hardest questions so I appreciate interesting points being made there.
>> MARTIN RUBY: I think I will actually say to the last question that I actually recommend against that approach in the sense that, and not because, I know I'm as biased as it gets, but still, my argument will be that if we, I think the age verification, it might be nerdy, but it is really cool if we want to have kids to be safe online it's about time we get practical around age verification.
I live in Europe. In Europe we are discussing E‑regulation for 10, 15 years and been adding a lot, but age verification is where there is still a gap, and we need to get that fixed otherwise we get nowhere. We can also have the other debate about the bigger picture, but I think it's really important to focus on that.
And then on the first question, just saying on the overall business model and algorithms, actually you can go in and sort of kill the Algeria on our platforms. You can say I want my feed to be chronological. Someone mentioned that before. You can do that. You go in there and choose chronological feed. I wouldn't recommend it as a user experience, but feel free to do it and then there is no Algeria controlling your feed.
And on the business model as such, the advertising business model, I mean, with some level of personalization is pretty much the business model of the whole Internet. I mean of news publishers, of, I mean, pretty much the business model of the whole Internet.
It's a lot of, it's a big bear you are shooting if you are, when you are discussing that. Let's bring that on the table.
>> MODERATOR: In interest of time, I will just have one online question and please try to make it within 30 seconds. We will take four questions at the same time and after the questions panelists be prepared to respond and give final remarks by giving our audience the one concrete question that they could take away. So I will start with the online question. The question is if a product is designed in a way that can cause harm, shouldn't the company that designed that be held accountable by those who are harmed in a court of law? First question. So the remaining, please, 30 seconds.
>> AUDIENCE: My name is Clare. I'm a high school student from Hong Kong, and I agree that everyone should take responsibility, but I guess my question is that since the age of children using social media is decreasing as the years go by and generations go by. To me it is because, a reason is because there are at least ‑‑ in Hong Kong there are kids use social media because they don't really have an alternative, and it's a way for kids, they are on their iPad because they don't have an alternative. And it's a way that parents are keeping them attentive. Like, for example, during dinner. I see many people scrolling on social media like children. My question is what are some ways that parents can get involved in averting kids' attention to social media to some other alternatives to get them off social media? But I agree that social media is, because I go to boarding school, I have been going to boarding school ‑‑
>> MODERATOR: Sorry to cut you. The next one, please.
>> AUDIENCE: My name is Hylan I'm a politics and technology student from Germany. In recent years we have seen a global shift towards more extreme political positions and social media is often used to amplify or radicalize these standards because many politicians actively use them to gain support from younger audiences. My question is how do you see the role of technology, tech companies and Governments in addressing these issue? Should there be more strong interventions or regulation to prevent the misuse of this platform for political radicalization? And if so, what kind of interventions should be appropriate? And I know that there are fact checking mechanisms that already exist to some extent, especially on Facebook, and do you think could they be used more strategically to contain, to counter political radicalization especially against the spread of dis and misinformation. Thank you so much.
>> AUDIENCE: Hi. My name is Kenneth from London. Thank you, Martin, for highlighting. Youth voices are getting lost in this debate. I want to reply on this as the advisor of Asia‑Pacific think tank. We have been looking at how AI is impacting digital issues including online safety and our latest findings which will be launched at the IGF this week mention that a lot of the things that you all have been talking about, the need of safety by design principles that incorporate age appropriate for the ecosystem and business model, but also how crucial transparency is.
And this is what I wanted to Zoom in on. So digital natives want to see not just online platform, principle policy in place or action taken to protect minors which is crucial, but digital natives want to have a seat at the table in shaping not just Government policy bust also these aspects of corporate Government and policies. In your remarks you have mentioned and emphasized the absence of a perfect solution to verify age and protect children on platforms.
I would encourage the youth and multistakeholder participation in shaping these corporate policies which will be very fundamental. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: For the panelists again, while you are addressing the question, please make your final remark.
>> AMINA RAMALLAN: I will respond to the first question to keep children engaged rather than social media. So just to not because these are all the list is exhaustive, right, so some of the things that parents can look at, you know, you have educational applications. You have educational games. I mean, there is so much out there online that children would rather be on than be on social media that can help with the learning, help with cognitive thinking, help with their ability to do better in school, help with their ability to learn to be creative to express themselves. You have creative platforms, platforms that will help children find out what they are good at, platforms to help children, you know, you have coding, storytelling, even music and art. There are a lot of platforms out there. It forces problem solving, creativity and digital literacy.
Also you have a lot of podcasts, age appropriate podcasts, of course, for children, audio books. Also they can listen to that. And also something that we used to do before which was a lot of outdoor activities now because of the Internet and social media everybody is indoors. The pandemic didn't help. We got used to being more indoors again. So but then being outside it helps physical not even just to be offline because of the risks, but it helps with physical health and it helps with reduces sedentary time.
A lot of times today not just even children, we also, we are at work, children are in school. They are sitting down, sitting down. That is also not good. So just to round up my one concrete action, I will say, yes, we talk about safety by design, but I will still key into awareness the Ambassador spoke about we are in a situation where parents did not have access to the Internet, a lot of parents did not have access to the Internet and social media as long as their kids. So we need to scale up that awareness. It's not just about, you know, the platforms doing the right thing. We need them to do that, but scale up awareness to the children, to the parents, to the teachers, to policymakers, and ensure that maybe five years ago the awareness might be about something. Today it can be about AI, it can be about how to be safe online and also not just in informal platforms. We need to also infuse these awareness sessions into this school curriculum so that while we are teaching children how to code and how to, you know, what is a computer, what is a monitor look like, we are also teaching them, okay, if you are on social media, this is it. If you are on social media, this is how you stay safe. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Amina. Ambassador.
>> BRENDAN DOWLING: Accountability in a court of law for harms caused by content on assembly platforms is really tricky question. There is a legal shield under U.S. law which protects, puts the liability with the person who posted the content, not with the social media platform. I think that's shaped the way that platforms have developed, but that's the way the law is there. I think it's other jurisdictions to figure out what the right legal approach is and whether there is liability if a platform fails to take action against content that is proved to be harmful can they be held liable for the harms? I think that's something that the courts of law will test.
Alternatives for kids, parents are lazy, I do this, I have young kids. Our kids get upset, our kids are bored. We are like have the screen. We have become bad at parenting because that's an easy way out. My worry is that when you give the screen to the child, they don't process their feelings when they are feeling angry or upset. Boredom is crucial to creativity. If we are taking away kids' ability to be bored, we are destroying creativity. That's on parents. If we see that's as a solution because kids are annoying us, and they can be annoying, no couldn't of doubt about that, then that's on us and we are failing as parents. There are lots of alternatives. That's okay that sometimes you are posting them in front of the screen is the only option or right thing to do, but as parents he we need to take responsibility.
Abusive platforms by politicians, extremist or radicalized messages, Meta, we should give credit here, there were years in which the algorithms were manipulated by politicians and extremists using Meta's platform. Meta took that seriously and has looked to address that.
I hope we are not seeing back sliding from Meta and other platforms now because this remains a real risk that the spread of extreme content, content that creates social divisions or reinforces social divisions will always be major risk in social media platforms.
And finally, youth getting involved in corporate governance in company policies I think is really important. Transparency, access for researchers has always been a crucial part of understanding what is happening in social media platforms. I think youth should expect to be involved and to be included in the way companies design their products.
>> LAURA REGO: I would like to comment because I think it's valid and I agree, but we have to look at the situation too by the view of someone in a developing country, because it's very easy when you are living somewhere that is mostly safe say you can take your kid to a park, but when you leave somewhere, there are dangers. You can't take your kid to the park when you want. When you don't have a lot of people who could help you raise your kid when you are a single mother, it's hard for you to take a shower to do basic things and so it's common that people in situations of vulnerability use more those tools to help raise those children. I read an Article once that compared with a Nanny or pacifier the use of screens.
And it's what's happening, but we have to come back to the multistakeholder and think that the Government must provide safety so I could take my children to the park. So the enterprises have to help me to control this time of screen. We have to work together if we want to think about the future of children worldwide.
>> MARTIN RUBY: I think I'll be maybe in the interest of time deep diving on the second question. On the freedom of speech point, I think it's right that, I mean, we could do a whole session on that one. It's interesting what to remove and what to leave up. It's something we face every day in the millions of cases where we have to decide why should a set border go for a piece of content.
Easier ones are threats to other people or porn or terrorism. It can be difficult to find it but when we find it it's easy to decide on. It just must go. The more difficult ones are the political statements, the misinformation, the tough talk because what is just sort of ‑‑ when is it too tough talk? All of those decisions and hitting the right balance there and then enforcing on it is super difficult no matter who owns the platforms. It's a very difficult and tricky task.
It's true as has been said by a couple of people that we have been better at it, I think, over the years and we have been taking down a lot of the ‑‑ when we saw the algorithms reinforcing things in a bad way, we have been trying to set a stop to that, but it is difficult because it comes down to the individual decision on what are you allowed to sort of say and when should I stop from saying that? And that is a big responsibility for us to have as, but, and it's a daily struggle for everyone who has that kind of platform and which is, of course, something we will have to learn.
Let's have a session on that next year. It's a super interesting one. And one final point is that I think maybe us in the room here, we would agree on 98% of what should be put on the Internet or put on social media, but not on 100%. We will never be not even two of us will be in agreement on 100% of what should be left up on our platforms. So that means there will always be disagreement about what is, where should those exact balances be, what should be and should not be allowed. It's very interesting.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you all for your closing remarks on strengthening safety and security on social media while also supporting the positive use of the platform by young people. I thank my co‑moderator, Lynn, for these sessions so I would like to take this chance to close the session by announcing that the message from the youth will be in the official output of the Summit and among the IGF 2025 outputs. Thank you very much for joining us.
(Applause).
