The Interview3 Dec 2025

Anika Wells, Communications Minister: Australia’s social media ban

“This is giving parents another weapon in their arsenal for their lives and for the happiness and mental wellbeing of their children.”

Katy Watson speaks to Australia’s Communication Minister Anika Wells about the world’s first social media ban for children under 16. Under the new law, social media companies will face fines of up to about US $32 million if they fail to take steps to ensure that under-16s in Australia cannot set up accounts. It has wide public support and comes about after research shows that seven out of ten Australian young people are suffering harm online. However, the law has its opponents too, from those who fear children could be cut off, or driven to darker, unregulated sites to the huge international technology companies and even the US President, but Anika Wells is undaunted. Her government wants to promote the mental health of its young people, and she maintains that even if the law is flawed, ‘Australians will look back and ask, why did that take so long? Not why did they do that?’ The Interview brings you conversations with people shaping our world, from all over the world. The best interviews from the BBC. You can listen on the BBC World Service on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 0800 GMT. Or you can listen to The Interview as a podcast, out three times a week on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts.

Presenter: Katy Watson Producers: Simon Atkinson, Clare Williamson & Farhana Haider Editor: Justine Lang

Get in touch with us on email TheInterview@bbc.co.uk and use the hashtag #TheInterviewBBC on social media

(Image: Anika Wells. Credit: Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(1965)

David Vigneault, ex-intelligence chief: Democracies are being destabilised

“This is one of the exact aspect of hybrid warfare of Russia… They are targeting us specifically to create dissentions, to create and to prop up artificially some voices in our societies that otherwis...

15 Sep 23min

Amir Khan Muttaqi, Afghan FM: Not everything is banned for women

Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s chief international correspondent, meets Afghanistan’s Foreign Minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi as the Taliban seeks greater international recognition. The Taliban returned to power ...

13 Sep 23min

Sophia Amoruso, Nasty Gal founder: I was out of my league

“I had hired a CEO for the last two years. The company was at a place where revenue had plateaued. I wasn’t someone who could look at a spreadsheet 50 tabs wide and tell my CFO what to do. I was defin...

10 Sep 23min

Vadym Skibitsky, Ukrainian intelligence: We are fighting for survival

“We don’t have another way for surviving, because we are an independent state, it's our territory, it's our land, it’s our culture, it’s our history, and we must fight to prevent the full occupation b...

8 Sep 23min

Rene Haas, Arm CEO: AI demand won’t slow

“Let's go back to the timeframe with the internet building out. We didn’t have an issue that the internet 20 years later is not a valuable utility… If you don't have access to a smartphone, try to get...

6 Sep 24min

Leah Solivan, TaskRabbit founder: How the gig economy falls short

“People just wanted to own the way they worked, but with that comes these institutional structures that have been built around the history of work that doesn’t allow for benefits programs or paid time...

3 Sep 22min

Daron Acemoglu, Economist: Liberal democracy is in crisis

BBC Newsnight presenter Paddy O’Connell speaks to Nobel Prize-winning economist Daron Acemoglu about why he thinks liberal democracy is in crisis, and how artificial intelligence could make it worse.D...

1 Sep 22min

Michelle Bachelet, UN Chief candidate: Time for a woman to lead

“For 80 years, we only have men [lead the UN] and I think it is not about women because she is a woman … The idea is a woman because she has the experience, the leadership, the capacity, the knowledge...

30 Aug 23min