分类： society

Australia’s federal government is prioritizing legislative reforms to toughen a landmark national ban on social media use for children under 16, after mounting data and expert analysis confirmed the original policy has failed to block underage users from major platforms, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has confirmed.

First implemented last December 10, Australia’s ban was a global first — no other country had previously codified an age-based prohibition on under-16s holding social media accounts on major platforms including Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram, Alphabet’s YouTube, and ByteDance’s TikTok. But in the seven months since the rule took effect, overwhelming evidence has shown the policy has fallen far short of its goals. Leading the push for stronger powers, Australia’s top online safety regulator eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has already signaled she is considering taking major platforms to court for failing to meet their obligations under the current law.

Speaking to Parliament Thursday, Albanese confirmed his administration is actively reviewing all options to strengthen the existing framework. “We’re working on that as a priority because this is something that other generations didn’t have to deal with, which is why it is complex,” he told lawmakers. In a follow-up interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corp. Friday, Albanese added that the government is assessing whether existing laws are robust enough, and whether Inman Grant’s office currently has full authority to enforce the ban effectively.

Independent data backs up claims that the original ban is not working. Internal data released by the eSafety office in March found that 70 percent of underage Australian children still maintain active accounts on major platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok. A separate study published Wednesday in the *British Medical Journal* went further, finding that 85 percent of Australian teens aged 12 to 17 continue to access platforms they are barred from using under current law.

Lisa Given, an information sciences expert at Melbourne’s RMIT University, told the Associated Press that the government’s push for reform is a direct response to this overwhelming evidence of failure. “I do think it’s failing,” Given said. “Many kids in the media have reported that they also think that this is really a failed exercise.”

The *Sydney Morning Herald* reported in early June that Inman Grant told a private interview that she currently lacks “potent powers” to enforce the ban, noting that “a regulator is only as good as the tools and the resources that they are given.” The AP requested comment from Inman Grant’s office Friday to verify the reporting, but did not receive an immediate response.

Given explained that the current regulation puts the onus on platforms to take “reasonable steps” to remove underage accounts, but the law does not clearly define what qualifies as reasonable steps. If platforms fail to comply, they can face maximum fines of 49.5 million Australian dollars, equal to roughly $34 million U.S. — but enforcement has stalled without clear regulatory authority. “Either the eSafety Commissioner needs more powers or we’ve got to have some other approach to enforcement,” Given said, adding that courts will likely need to ultimately clarify what the law requires of platforms.

Albanese confirmed that alongside strengthening the under-16 ban, the government will move forward with a broader digital duty of care law, which would hold social media companies legally accountable for foreseeable harms to users caused by platform content and algorithmic recommendation systems.

Australia’s push to toughen age-based social media restrictions is part of a growing global trend. Just last week, the United Kingdom announced its own plans to ban children under 16 from most major social media platforms, framing the rule as a necessary protection for young people against harmful online content and excessive screen time. Canada, Brazil and Indonesia have already introduced similar age-based legislation or restrictions, while France, Spain, Denmark, Thailand and South Korea are all currently developing or studying comparable regulations to limit children’s social media access.

This summer, a low-budget Chinese drama has become an unexpected cultural flashpoint halfway across the world, after a sleeper box office success from China reignited long-simmering conversations about cultural identity and language policy in Singapore. *Dear You*, a nostalgic story exploring family bonds, hardship, and cross-generational hope, was shot almost entirely in Teochew — a regional dialect originating from China’s Chaoshan area that remains a mother tongue for many older ethnic Chinese communities across Southeast Asia, including Singapore.

When the film arrived in Singaporean cinemas this month, local audiences were quick to express frustration: most screenings were slated to run only with a Mandarin dub. Mandarin, one of Singapore’s four official languages alongside English, Malay, and Tamil, has been actively promoted by the government for decades as a unifying common language for the country’s Chinese majority, at the expense of regional Chinese dialects. Only eight special original-language Teochew screenings were initially scheduled, and all tickets sold out in under two hours, highlighting overwhelming unmet demand from local viewers.

Wu Silin, a Singaporean church worker who secured tickets to one of the rare original screenings alongside her mother, noted that experiencing the film in Teochew added an irreplaceable layer of personal meaning for community members. The outcry over limited original screenings quickly grew into a broader public debate about Singapore’s decades-long language policy. Even expats like Anna Zhang, a Beijing-based worker who relocated to Singapore for employment, sought out the original Teochew cut with subtitles, arguing that dubbed versions lose the authentic nuance of the original characters’ performances.

Written on a modest budget and led mostly by first-time actors, *Dear You* follows the journey of a young southern Chinese villager who travels to Thailand to track down his grandfather, who fled his hometown in 1948 to avoid conscription during China’s civil war. The grandfather built a new life as a trishaw rider in 1950s Bangkok, sending years of longing-filled letters back to his wife and children in China. The story’s themes resonate deeply with Singapore’s ethnic Chinese community, 70% of the country’s total population, whose ancestors were part of the massive 19th to mid-20th century wave of Chinese migration that brought millions to Southeast Asia in search of new lives.

“Dialects have always been the root of where the Singaporean Chinese come from. Mandarin, I would say, is mostly a superimposed language that we learn from schools,” explained Lee Cher Leng, an associate professor of Chinese studies at the National University of Singapore. “I think it’s really interesting that a small movie like that would bring something so impactful to the surface.”

Singapore’s official approach to dialects dates back to the 1960s, when the government adopted a national bilingual policy that designated English as a universal working language and assigned one of four ethnic “mother tongues” — Mandarin for Chinese Singaporeans — to be taught in schools. The 1979 Speak Mandarin Campaign amplified this push, aiming to unify the linguistically diverse Chinese community by replacing regional dialects including Teochew, Hokkien, Cantonese, and Hakka with standard Mandarin. By the 1980s, dialect content had been removed from radio and television, and most films screened in Singapore were dubbed into Mandarin.

The policy has been undeniably successful in its original goals: in 1980, roughly 70% of Singaporean Chinese spoke a dialect at home. By 2020, that number had plummeted to just 8.7%, with dialect use now concentrated almost entirely among a shrinking cohort of elderly Singaporeans. Today, nearly half of all Singaporeans report English as their most comfortable language, but restrictions on dialect content remain largely in place.

In response to the public outcry over *Dear You*, Singapore’s Ministry of Communications and Information acknowledged widespread calls for more accessible dialect film screenings in a public statement, announcing that authorities would adopt a “more flexible approach” to the policy. Following the initial sell-out of the eight original screenings, a second round of 5,000 tickets for eight additional shows sold out in two hours, and authorities approved 50 more Teochew-language screenings just days later. Some viewers even reported planning cross-border trips to neighboring Malaysia to catch the original cut before the additional screenings were approved.

The debate has drawn commentary from across Singapore’s political and cultural spheres. In an open letter published in *The Straits Times*, two local filmmakers argued that the Speak Mandarin Campaign had fully achieved its founding goal of unifying Chinese Singaporeans around Mandarin, and that relaxing dialect screening rules would signal a new, mature approach to celebrating the community’s cultural diversity. Opposition Member of Parliament Dennis Tan echoed this sentiment in a Facebook post, framing dialects as “the living, breathing repositories of our forefathers’ journeys, customs, and identity.” Two sitting lawmakers have also formally submitted questions to authorities about revising rules for screening original dialect films, ensuring the conversation will continue in official circles.

For many Singaporeans, the film is more than entertainment — it is a window into a fading cultural heritage. Wu, who attended the original screening, pointed to a Teochew coming-of-age ritual featured in the film called “leaving the garden,” which was held for her when she turned 15 but was omitted for her niece’s 15th birthday last year, an example of how cultural traditions tied to dialect are disappearing alongside the language itself.

While a growing number of young Singaporeans have begun pursuing connection to their ancestral roots in recent years — taking dialect classes, organizing trips to ancestral hometowns in China, and seeking out community dialect events — academics warn this grassroots interest is not enough to reverse the long-term decline of dialect use. “Young people who are learning them now … You can learn it like a foreign language and learn it for fun. But if no-one is speaking it in daily life, you’re not going to be able to retain it,” said Tan Ying Ying, an associate professor at Nanyang Technological University specializing in dialect studies. She described the public uproar over *Dear You* as “perhaps like grieving a loss” for a cultural heritage that is slowly fading from daily life in Singapore.

For nearly six centuries, the Indigenous Dong people of China have called the remote mountain ranges of southwestern China home. Without a formal written language, their centuries-old cultural knowledge has been passed down exclusively through oral tradition, leaving much of their unique way of life largely underexplored and unknown to broader global society. Now, an ambitious academic-led research initiative is pulling back the curtain on this little-understood marginalized community by systematically documenting their one-of-a-kind built environment, unlocking new insights into their social structure, spiritual beliefs and longstanding traditions.

Today, an estimated 3 million Dong people reside across the mountainous provinces of Guizhou, Hunan and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The group is already recognized globally for its polyphonic choral singing, which was added to UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009. While their unique approach to terraced agriculture, handcrafted architecture and harmonious integration of settlements with natural landscapes are equally distinctive, these cultural treasures have never been systematically digitally recorded, remaining largely invisible to outside researchers and conservationists.

Typically tucked away in dense fir forests, with direct access to waterways at valley bottoms or mid-hill slopes, Dong settlements follow a deliberate, community-focused layout. Most villages house between 200 and 500 households, with an average of four to five people per family. Every settlement is marked by a formal gatehouse that clearly defines its territorial boundaries relative to neighboring communities. Most are also home to a signature wind-and-rain bridge: a multi-purpose structure that blends the function of a village entrance and a covered bridge, serving as a gathering space for communal events and traditional blocking ceremonies. Scattered across the village landscape are hand-dug ponds, traditional wells, and raised granaries that support daily community life.

At the core of every Dong village, surrounded by two- to three-story wooden family homes, stand two central structures that anchor the community’s spiritual and social life: the iconic drum tower and the sacred Sa-Sui shrine. The drum tower embodies the Dong people’s deeply held spiritual connection between clan kinship and the fir trees that sustain their mountain homes, while the Sa-Sui shrine serves as the central site for worship of “Sa”, the grandmother deity central to Dong religious tradition. For security, social cohesion and spiritual identity, these two structures are the most significant buildings in any Dong village.

Despite their centuries of resilience, the Dong people’s unique built and cultural heritage now faces growing, existential threats from a combination of overlapping forces: accelerating climate change, unplanned modern development, expanding infrastructure, and the rapid growth of mass rural tourism. A warming global climate has increased the frequency of destructive wildfires and severe mountain flooding that ravage traditional wooden structures. As urban development encroaches on remote Dong territories, it brings improvements to quality of life but also introduces new fire risks via substandard electrical infrastructure retrofitted into historic wooden buildings.

In recent years, the expansion of transportation networks including roads, railways and new bridges, paired with unregulated tourism growth, has pushed many traditional villages toward becoming superficial decorative stage sets for visitors. While tourism generates new local income, it erodes the authentic relationship between Dong architecture, the surrounding landscape and the community’s traditional way of life. Making matters worse, the remote mountain location of most Dong villages has left local communities and regional authorities with extremely limited financial and institutional resources to address threats. Existing conservation policies and frameworks are underdeveloped, meaning repair, restoration and sustainable regeneration projects have lagged far behind the pace of destruction.

As China has undergone rapid urbanization over the past four decades, contemporary housing built with modern industrial materials and non-traditional designs has increasingly replaced historic wooden structures, irreversibly altering the visual identity and cultural meaning of traditional Dong settlements. The impact of poorly planned development can be seen at Ju Dong Village, where new infrastructure has permanently altered the historic setting surrounding the village’s ancient drum tower. Even purpose-built tourist attractions misrepresent Dong heritage: at Guizhou’s Danzhai Wanda Village, a new tourism development near Kaili, five newly constructed “iconic” drum towers are presented as standalone tourist monuments, stripped of their original contextual connection to surrounding homes, forests and community life that gives the structures their cultural meaning.

It is this urgent need to document and protect authentic Dong heritage that gave rise to the groundbreaking *Decoding Dong* project. Launched in 2023 and completed in 2025, the interdisciplinary initiative brought together experts from architecture, anthropology, heritage science, sociology and digital humanities to create the first systematic digital record of the Dong people’s physical and cultural heritage.

The project employed a suite of cutting-edge, complementary research methods, including 3D LiDAR scanning, aerial and terrestrial photogrammetry, 3D reality capture modeling, precise measured drawing, documentary filmmaking, and detailed geographic mapping. These technical tools were paired with oral history interviews collected directly from Dong community members, centering Indigenous knowledge in the documentation process. To date, the project has completed the first-of-its-kind digital archive of Dong architectural heritage, creating detailed digital and audio-visual records of approximately 100 historic buildings across a dozen remote Dong villages. Throughout the research process, the team prioritized consultation with key community stakeholders, including clan leaders, elderly villagers and regional cultural policymakers, to ensure the work aligned with community needs and priorities.

While Dong Indigenous heritage remains under significant threat, constrained by limited resources for local governments and communities, the *Decoding Dong* project marks a critical step forward for conservation efforts. By building a publicly accessible, community-centered archive of cultural information supported by modern digital technology, the project team aims to raise global awareness of the Dong people’s unique cultural legacy without compromising the traditions and identity that make the community distinct.