Australia Bans Under-16s From Social Media in World First

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Meta's AI infrastructure is bringing jobs to local communities like Las Lunas, New Mexico. Phil, who grew up in Las Lunas, has seen the positive impact that Meta's ongoing $600 billion investment in American jobs and infrastructure will bring.

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I had to travel for work.

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Missing moments, I can't get back.

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Then Meta opened a data center and brought new jobs.

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Now, I don't worry about missing out anymore.

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Learn more about Meta's investment at meta.com/buildingamerica.

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It's Fed Day. We'll look at the divide among policymakers on the wisdom of interest rate cuts. Plus Australia bans teens from social media in a world first.

Annika Wells (0:45)

Today we change a generation. Today we change a culture. Today we change lives for the better.

Luke Vargas (0:55)

And Miami swings Democratic for the first time in decades. It's Wednesday, December 10th. I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. And here is the AM Edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

We begin in Australia where a landmark social media ban for children under the age of 16 is now in effect, with governments around the world keeping a close eye on how it will work in practice. Politicians, parents, and mental health experts have been calling for the bans, as more studies have shown that social media can worsen feelings of anxiety and depression. Here was Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaking alongside Communications Minister Annika Wells in Sydney.

Anthony Albanese (1:39)

Technology can have an amazing impact on making our life easier. But it is important as technology develops that humans keep control, that we assert our authority as a society and to back families and to say that enough is enough. We will take back control.

Annika Wells (2:06)

For many years, the world has allowed the idea that the internet can have different rules from real life, that somehow it can be a free space unregulated by any of the values by which we govern ourselves.

The people the Prime Minister has gathered here today are the people who refused to leave this dilemma in the hands of someone else. You are the people that took this on and demanded children come before trillion dollar companies. So this is about the parents who have kids who could not be here today.

Luke Vargas (2:42)

Children younger than 16 will now be banned by law from holding accounts on platforms including Facebook, X, and TikTok, with social media companies facing fines of more than 30 million dollars if they fail to take reasonable steps to remove the accounts. Metta was the first tech giant to react. It began deactivating accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and threads ahead of the ban last week. At the same time, teenagers have argued that the ban hurts free speech, with Australia's High Court agreeing to hear a challenge to the ban. Tech companies have made the same argument, and as tech reporter Sam Schechner explained in our latest Sunday episode, these types of bans present a real threat to their future profits.

SPEAKER_3 (3:25)

In many cases, these companies aren't perhaps currently actively monetizing young teen users. That's sort of one of the concessions that they made in efforts to stave off just this kind of legislation. That being said, we know, in part from our Facebook files reporting, that the social media companies look at these young users as their future adult user base. And now is the time when they can help attract users, build habits that will continue to keep their companies with healthy user bases that generate revenue into the future.

Luke Vargas (4:01)

And it seems that big tech could be facing a seismic shift now, with other countries including Malaysia, Denmark and Norway looking to implement similar bans. And US states like Florida and California are also moving to curtail young people's access to social media. For more on Australia's social media ban, check out the latest Sunday episode in your podcast feed. We've also left a link to it in our show notes. Investors are pricing in an almost 90% chance that the Fed will lower interest rates later today. Chair Jerome Powell has made his own cutting intentions pretty clear, but his journal deputy finance editor Quentin Webb is here to discuss. There is a notable lack of consensus among the bank's policy makers about which way the central bank should be heading. Quentin, you've pulled together recent comments by all 12 officials who will be weighing in later today and you sort of sorted them into camps. Tell us what you found.

Quentin Webb (4:59)

Well, so you can see that there is quite a big split. I think you could probably divide them into three big camps. The Hawks who would probably want to be careful about a cut because they're worried about inflation which has run above target for several years. The Doves who would prefer to cut rates because they're worried about where the labour market is headed and they think that the effective tariffs on inflation is overstated. And then there's the third camp of the kind of undecideds where their public comments today have been pretty carefully hedged and so you can't quite tell where they stand. And what we saw in mid to late November was that one influential fed policy maker, John Williams, the New York Fed, came out in favour of a cut and effectively that signalled to the market that a cut was going to be likely because the balance overall was shifting that way and Powell was probably likely to go in that direction as well. There's some sense that some senior fed officials are close allies of Powell, let's put it that way, and so if they say something, it's likely to track with what he's thinking.