Effectiveness of Age-assurance Requirements for Social Media Services

Dr Charlene Chen asked the Minister for Digital Development and Information (a) how the effectiveness of age-assurance requirements for social media services will be evaluated after their implementation; and (b) whether the Ministry will publish data on their effectiveness, including the extent to which they reduce access by users below the prescribed minimum age.

Mr Speaker, the question by Dr Charlene Chen on the Government's proposed measures to enhance safeguards for children on social media platforms, has been addressed in the written reply to Question No 41 at the 8 September Parliament Sitting. The Member may wish to refer to the answer given.

Dr Chen.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and I thank the Minister of State.

Could the Minister of State share the Ministry's current assessment of whether available age assurance technologies are sufficiently mature and reliable for this purpose; and how confident is the Ministry that all designated social media services will be able to implement measures that meet Singapore's requirements; and what happens if a platform's proposed method does not meet Singapore's requirements by the implementation deadline?

I have two more supplementary questions.

The next one, in the written reply, the Minister referred to measures that are robust and effective. So, could the Minister of State clarify the specific criteria and performance thresholds that the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) will apply? So, for example, accuracy, resistance to circumvention; and whether these standards will be published before implementation as well?

My final supplementary question, could the Minister of State clarify how feedback from youths will influence the final requirements, in particular, which aspects of the proposed approach would remain open to change, and will the Ministry publish the main concerns raised by our youths and explain how these have been reflected in the final framework?

Mr Speaker, I thank the Member for her questions and her interest.

Some of the questions she asked are fairly specific in nature. The discussions and negotiations with the social media platforms are still ongoing, and we would have to provide information at the later date when ready. But what I can inform the Member is this. Firstly, this approach of actually putting in age assurance measures is not new to Singapore.

We have actually done so with the Code of Practice for Online Safety for the apps distribution services and so, we have an idea of how to go about doing this, and we do see already there are existing mature technologies that they can already apply and use. We will use our same broad requirements for the app distribution services while we are negotiating for the requirements for the designated social media services.

We note the Member had mentioned also concerns on personal data for example, there are already currently technologies that will be able to actually effectively manage age assurance measures, but also take into account data protection of personal data for everyone, but in particular for children. These are things that the social media platforms can also deploy and learn from. So, these are things that are being cooked, and we will then update members accordingly with more information as we roll out more information on this matter.

The other point that the Member had asked about was the conversations and discussions with our young people. It is a very meaningful engagement that we have had. The Minister and myself have met many young people as part of our efforts to actually understand their perspectives on how we should introduce the age assurance measures and the approach we should take, with regard to the social media platforms. A couple of very interesting findings.

Firstly, the youths are actually very sensible and they are actually more mature than we think. They actually are very open to have safeguards in place. They know and understand the need for the safeguards, and many of them, in our conversations, also expressed their worries for their younger siblings, younger friends. They do agree that there needs to be some sort of measures in place. But what they hope and what they prefer to have is not to be totally cut out.

So, they are generally supportive of our tiered approach, but they do wish for us to have a calibrated approach to this. I think it is important as we are setting up frameworks and position for matters that affect our young people. We do take into account their considerations. This would be one touch point, one data point.

There have already been information that we have gotten from expert panels. We are studying what is happening overseas. All these will be helping us in actually forming a meaningful approach for our youths here in Singapore. So, these are all still in the works and we will provide more information when available.