New Zealand to introduce Bill banning social media for children under 16

NEW: New Zealand to introduce a Bill banning social media for children under 16.

New Zealand wants to ban social media for everyone under sixteen. A Bill is heading to Parliament to do exactly that.

This is Wellington following Australia's lead, and you can see the Beehive here, where lawmakers will now have to answer the questions Canberra never quite did. How do you verify a fifteen year old's age without collecting everyone's ID? What counts as social media, and does YouTube get a pass? Every parent in the country has an opinion on this, and so does every teenager with a burner account.

The platforms have heard all this before. Their usual playbook is to lobby hard, warn about privacy, and quietly hope the enforcement is toothless. But governments keep lining up, and each new ban makes the next one easier to pass.

A whole generation of Kiwi kids may be about to lose the apps their parents can't put down.

This is Sara White, reporting for HIT.