Australia on Wednesday moved closer to banning social media for children under 16 after the parliament's lower house passed the bill even as Alphabet's Google and Facebook-owner Meta pressed the government to delay the legislation.

Australia's House of Representatives passed the bill 102 votes to 13 after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's centre-left Labor government secured bipartisan support for the ban.

The Senate is expected to debate the bill later on Wednesday, with the government keen to ensure it is passed by the end of the parliamentary year on Thursday.

With widespread support of the bill, analysts said this all but guarantees the legislation will pass in the Senate, where no party holds a majority of seats.

The bill would make platforms including TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram liable for fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars for systemic failures to prevent young children from holding accounts.

If it becomes law this week, the platforms would have one year to work out how to implement the age restrictions before the penalties are enforced.

Albanese, trying to lift his approval ratings ahead of an election expected in May, has argued that excessive use of social media poses risks to the physical and mental health of children and is looking for support from parents.

The planned law would force social media platforms to take reasonable steps to ensure age-verification protections are in place. Companies could be fined up to A$49.5 million (US$32 million) for systemic breaches.

Opposition lawmaker Dan Tehan told Parliament the government had agreed to accept amendments in the Senate that would bolster privacy protections.

Platforms would not be allowed to compel users to provide government-issued identity documents including passports or driver’s licences. The platforms also could not demand digital identification through a government system.

“Will it be perfect? No. But is any law perfect? No, it’s not. But if it helps, even if it helps in just the smallest of ways, it will make a huge difference to people’s lives,” Tehan told Parliament.

Some youth advocates including Australia's human rights commission raised concerns the law would hurt children's rights to self-expression, but a YouGov survey released on Tuesday showed 77 percent of Australians backed the ban, up from 61 percent in an August survey.

Lawmakers who were not aligned with either the government or the opposition were most critical of the legislation during the debate on Tuesday and Wednesday.

There were criticisms the legislation had been rushed through Parliament without adequate scrutiny, would not work, would create privacy risks for users of all ages and would take away parents’ authority to decide what’s best for their children.

Critics also argue the ban would isolate children, deprive them of positive aspects of social media, drive children to the dark web, make children too young for social media reluctant to report harms they encountered and take away incentives for platforms to make online spaces safer.

Independent lawmaker Zoe Daniel said the legislation would “make zero difference to the harms that are inherent to social media.”

“The true object of this legislation is not to make social media safe by design, but to make parents and voters feel like the government is doing something about it,” Daniel told Parliament.

“There is a reason why the government parades this legislation as world-leading, that’s because no other country wants to do it,” she added. (Agencies)