Dr Michael John Schmidt: This Will Mean More Victims, Not Fewer

NZ’s social media crackdown

New Zealand is poised to follow France and Australia down a regulatory cul-de-sac – one paved with good intentions and riddled with structural failure. The proposed Social Media (Age-Restricted Users) Bill, which seeks to bar under-16s from accessing social media without verified age checks, is not just ill-considered, it is a textbook example of enforcement-first governance that will generate new harms, empower criminal actors and criminalise the very youth it claims to protect.

Matua Kahurangi: Thought crimes and ID checks

New Zealand’s alarming march toward digital censorship

A retired British cop got arrested in May 2025 for what the authorities called a “thought crime”. No threats. No inciting violence. Just a tweet that rubbed someone up the wrong way. It sounds like something out of Orwell, but it’s real.

And if you reckon that sort of carry-on couldn’t happen in New Zealand, you might want to think again. We’ve got a habit of copying what the UK and Aussie do, especially when it comes to tightening up laws that control what people can and can’t say.

David Farrar: National proposes social media ban for under 16s

The Herald reports:

National MP Catherine Wedd is introducing a new member’s bill aiming to ban children under 16 from accessing social media platforms in New Zealand.

Wedd, MP for Tukituki in Hawke’s Bay, said the My Social Media Age-Appropriate Users Bill is about protecting the “most vulnerable young teenagers and children from the online harms of social media”.