Australia has enacted a world-first ban on social media for users aged under 16, causing millions of children and teenagers to lose access to their accounts.
Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, YouTube, Snapchat, Reddit, Kick, Twitch and TikTok are expected to have taken steps from Wednesday to remove accounts held by users under 16 years of age in Australia, and prevent those teens from registering new accounts.
Platforms that do not comply risk fines of up to $49.5m.
There have been some teething problems with the ban’s implementation. Guardian Australia has received several reports of those under 16 passing the facial age assurance tests, but the government has flagged it is not expecting the ban will be perfect from day one.
All listed platforms apart from X had confirmed by Tuesday they would comply with the ban. The eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, said it had recently had a conversation with X about how it would comply, but the company had not communicated its policy to users.
Bluesky, an X alternative, announced on Tuesday it would also ban under-16s, despite eSafety assessing the platform as “low risk” due to its small user base of 50,000 in Australia.
Parents of children affected by the ban shared a spectrum of views on the policy. One parent told the Guardian their 15-year-old daughter was “very distressed” because “all her 14 to 15-year-old friends have been age verified as 18 by Snapchat”. Since she had been identified as under 16, they feared “her friends will keep using Snapchat to talk and organise social events and she will be left out”.
Others said the ban “can’t come quickly enough”. One parent said their daughter was “completely addicted” to social media and the ban “provides us with a support framework to keep her off these platforms”.
“The fact that teenagers occasionally find a way to have a drink doesn’t diminish the value of having a clear, national standard.”
Polling has consistently shown that two-thirds of voters support raising the minimum age for social media to 16. The opposition, including leader Sussan Ley, have recently voiced alarm about the ban, despite waving the legislation through parliament and the former Liberal leader Peter Dutton championing it.
The ban has garnered worldwide attention, with several nations indicating they will adopt a ban of their own, including Malaysia, Denmark and Norway. The European Union passed a resolution to adopt similar restrictions, while a spokesperson for the British government told Reuters it was “closely monitoring Australia’s approach to age restrictions”.
Parents who were also raised by social media? This isn’t a new problem but it is a problem that’s getting worse, I don’t know if a ban is the answer but so far nobody has even suggested an effective alternative to reducing screen-time for both adults and kids.
This ban isn’t supposed to solve a problem overnight, but it’s supposed to influence some segment of the population to socialize, to form real communities and to hopefully grow up capable of helping their own kids not get addicted.
This is a real problem, it’s widespread across the globe and many, many studies have shown the harm social media has on a huge percentage of teens.
Also, parents work. Parents sleep. You can’t fucking hover over your teen night and day, you would hate that worse.
The solution is education not bans. This is crazy. Regulating social media access has some major privacy concerns, will make parents more complacent and will only cause kids to seek other more dubious means of communicating. It also places a major wall in front of the development of new social media platforms.
I agree.
But what do we do about the fact that even though our knowledge, research and understanding of the problem has increased, the problem has gotten worse? Is there more that can be done on that front that you think would be effective? Genuinely asking to help me shape my opinion.
It’s blooming into a larger-scale societal problem than just hoping enough people pull through, a lack of stable mental health and attention spans across large swaths of your population start to erode your society.
Yes: their problem.
I’m saying this is a societal problem, you may be 100% correct that it’s the parent’s responsibility to manage, but that isn’t happening and we can’t make it happen. Unless you think a law enforcing parental monitoring would be less fascist than a social media ban.
Again, their problem: let them go to shit. It’s everyone’s fundamental right to fuck themselves over.
Okay so you’re just some completely unserious edgy kid who doesn’t care about the betterment of anything, I am no longer interested in your opinions. Go live in the wilderness.
No, society doesn’t owe people whatever you’re pushing. Liberty > bullshit state intrusion to act as everyone’s nanny. No one has to agree with your bullshit concern or agree to nonsense impositions.
The concept of society is fundamentally opposed to your “everyone is responsible solely and completely for themself” ideal up there. I have a vested interest in people not throwing their life away.