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NZ Parliament Inquiry into the harm young New Zealanders encounter online

Posted in Submission, Government; Tagged Health, Sexuality, Gambling, Justice, Government, Accessibility; Posted 9 months ago by DPA Less than a minute to read

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To: Education and Workforce Select Committee
Date: August 2025

 

Purpose

Parliamentary select committee into the online harms which young people run when accessing the internet.

Summary of DPA submission

DPA supported government taking a more regulatory approach when it comes to the management of online digital harm(s) from media platforms as these are having significant impacts on the disabled and wider communities both here and overseas. 

However, DPA acknowledged that social media harms can be generated and experienced by people across all age groups and backgrounds, not just young people.

We repeated the calls we made in our submission to the Department of Internal Affairs inquiry into online and media regulation in 2023 that government introduce strong media standards legislation backed by a media standards regulator.

DPA made the following disability specific recommendations/asks to the inquiry:

Recommendation 1: That disabled people are amongst the specific population groups identified in the legislation as at high risk of experiencing online and digital harm.  

 

Recommendation 2: That the media standards regulator works with communities, including disabled people, around Aotearoa to develop media standard codes, including those relating to online media.

 

We also recommended that all complaints processes relating to online and digital harm should be accessible to everyone, including disabled people and that social and online harm prevention education programmes should be run within all communities, including with disabled people.

 

 

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DPA Submission 2507 NZ Parliament Inquiry into the harm young New Zealanders encounter online (DOCX)

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