Australia is going where no country has gone before, and many countries around the world are watching. On Wednesday, Australia will ban social media for anyone under the age of 16.
Banned apps include TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Snapchat, YouTube, Reddit, Kick and Twitch. Exempted apps include popular gaming platform Discord, Messenger Kids, WhatsApp, Pinterest, Kids Helpline, Google Classroom and YouTube Kids. AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, OpenAI’s Sora and Google Gemini are not included in the ban.
Don’t miss any of our unbiased technical content and lab reviews. Add CNET as your preferred Google source.
Australia will be the first country to launch this type of age-restricted social media ban. Several other countries, including China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Turkey, Uganda, Saudi Arabia and India, have fully or partially banned social media, usually for political and security reasons.
Other countries, including Denmark, France, Norway and Malaysia, are considering bans similar to Australia’s and will monitor the effectiveness of Australia’s ban over the coming months.
Although many studies have been conducted around the world on the psycho-emotional effects of social media use on children, the idea for the Australian ban originated in The Anxious Generation, a book by American psychologist Jonathan Haidt. Annabel West, the wife of South Australian Prime Minister Peter Malinauskas, encouraged her husband to consider a ban after reading Haidt’s 2024 book.
Tech companies must implement it, otherwise
Apps may use age-guarantee technologies, such as facial and voice analysis, to verify that a consumer is at least 16 years old. Social media companies can also check how long an account has been active and assess its age based on language style and community membership.
Kids being kids, they’ll find workarounds, like the 13-year-old girl who held up a photo of her mother’s face to fool age verification. The Australian government said it would stop children using fake identity documents, AI tools or VPN to simulate their age and location.
Tech companies will face a $33 million fine, as stipulated in the legislation, if they violate the under-16 ban.
Two 15-year-old Australians, supported by the Digital Freedom Project, are challenging the social media ban, and the country’s High Court could hear their case as early as February. They argue, in part, that the ban “will have the effect of sacrificing a considerable sphere of freedom of expression and engagement for young people aged 13 to 15 in social media interactions (including communications on personal and governmental issues, and the benefits of such interactions for these young people). »
TikTok said it would comply with the new laws, while noting that the restrictions “could be upsetting” for customers. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has already started removing accounts of users under 16. Snapchat is set to delete almost half a million Australian children from their accounts. Unsurprisingly, X boss Elon Musk criticized the change, writing in 2024 that the law “appears to be a backdoor way of controlling access to the internet for all Australians.”
Some praise the ban
Donna Rice Hughes, president and CEO of Enough is Enough, a not-for-profit organization whose mission is “to make the internet safer for children and families”, praised Australia for “taking a proactive approach to protecting children from the harms of social media”.
Enough is Enough, launched in 1992, documented the myriad pitfalls of social media for children, including overuse, sexting, online exploitation, bullying, depression and more. The organization has published several Internet safety guides and security settings for social media applications.
“This ban should incentivize social media and other online platforms and services to be proactive in implementing safer technologies and default parental management tools before rushing to market with products potentially harmful to children and adolescents,” Hughes told CNET.
Hughes added that Big Tech has only itself to blame for government intervention like Australia’s.
“They haven’t done the right thing for our children from the beginning,” she said. “The carrot approach of voluntary industry efforts to prioritize child safety over profits has not worked. A historical reality is that the first social media platforms to take off in the United States and abroad, Facebook and Myspace, were developed for college-age students and older.”
The United States does not have an age limit as strict as Australia’s, but 12 states are working on laws to regulate and restrict teenagers’ access to social media.
