Markets 
Updated ,first published
The federal government will consider banning porn which depicts choking after a 16-year-old girl died in Sydney in a suspected case of strangulation during sex.
Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek said the government was “seriously looking” at replicating laws introduced in the UK last year which criminalised both possession and publication of images depicting strangulation and suffocation.
“There is something wrong with a situation where 60 per cent of young people say they’ve experienced strangulation during sexual encounters,” she told ABC’s Insiders on Sunday.
“There is no safe way to strangle someone.”
Her comments follow the death of a 16-year-old girl in Sydney’s northern beaches area early last week in a suspected case of strangulation during what is believed to have been consensual sex.
Concerns are also mounting about the increase in rates of peer-to-peer abuse among adolescents, as teenagers overtake adults as the most likely perpetrators of sexual violence towards young people.
On Friday, St Gregory’s in Campbelltown suspended two of its students, both aged 17, who have been charged with raping a 17-year-old girl (a third boy attends a different school). Scots College has faced criticism for not taking similar action against three of its students, aged 13 and 14, who are accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in a Bondi Junction alleyway.
Amid debate about the amount of misogynistic or violent content to which young men are exposed, Plibersek said the government would also consider allowing users to opt in or opt out of social media algorithms.
“If you set up a social media account as a young boy in Australia today, it takes an average of 23 minutes for you to be fed misogynistic [or] violent content online,” she said.
“It is pervasive and widespread and deadly, and it’s being spread to our young people and normalised … that is a deliberate decision of the social media companies.”
Consent campaigner Chanel Contos has been calling on the government to introduce an opt-in feature for social media algorithms so users can decide whether they want their feeds to be curated by an algorithm, but said it must be opt-in to stop the “instant onboarding” into dangerous content.
Contos said she supported the proposed ban, but said wider trends of violence against women and minorities in porn needed to be looked at.
“We need to look at wider trends and the fact most mainstream porn depicts violence against women, and the broader ramifications to that,” she said.
“Why is there this insane demand and supply of content that depicts violence, and why is that so normalised and celebrated?”
Monash University Professor and family violence expert Kate Fitz-Gibbon said the government should act immediately to ban violent porn.
“Strangulation is inherently dangerous, yet pornography is helping to normalise it as an expected part of sex. We should not wait for more young people to be harmed before regulating content that depicts potentially lethal violence as sexual entertainment,” she said.
Fitz-Gibbon said strangulation also needed to be considered in the context of domestic and family violence.
“Non-fatal strangulation is a serious form of violence and a well-established marker of heightened risk, including the risk of serious and fatal intimate partner violence.
“We should be extremely concerned about any broader normalisation of strangulation as an expected part of intimate relationships.”
UNSW and Monash University professor Matt Tyler called for greater transparency around how social media platforms pushed content.
“Targeted regulation of violent and harmful pornography, including content depicting choking and strangulation, should sit alongside age assurance and greater transparency around the algorithms that recommend and amplify content,” he said.
“When violent sexual practices are readily accessible and repeatedly presented as normal, we cannot ignore the role that content may play in shaping expectations and behaviour.”
Plibersek also said the government was closely monitoring additional restrictions introduced by Meta as part of a landmark $24 billion settlement in the US.
Meta, which denied wrongdoing, was accused of fuelling the youth mental health crisis by deliberately designing features that addict children.
In settling, Meta agreed to add child safety measures to its Facebook and Instagram platforms to end a landmark trial over teen social media addiction, including adding daily time limits, eliminating notifications during school hours and adding “age-appropriate” content controls including blocking beauty filters.
The reforms may form part of the government’s Digital Duty of Care, which will legally require tech companies and online services to proactively protect users from foreseeable online harms.
The National Cabinet has also agreed to fund a review into consent and respectful relationships program in schools. The government is working with Teach Us Consent, founded by Contos, to teach young people that pornography is not real life.
More than half of Australians aged 18 to 35 say they have been strangled during sex at least once.
Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.
Amber Schultz is a crime and justice reporter with The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X or email.From our partners
Read the full article here
