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”.
There is precedence though. We age gate: nicotine, alcohol, gambling etc..
we shouldnt expect parents to be monitoring children 24/7. actually, as children get older they should be given freedoms, parents have the right to expect our society has some guardrails.
The guardrails already exist. Put parental controls on your kid's devices. Done, solved. Block social media sites, monitor what they're doing online. Don't go making it mandatory for everyone to give social media companies more information than they already have.
A better comparison would be "let's put a government mandated ID scanner on everyone's liquor cabinet so that their kids can't access it! Oh you don't have kids? Too bad, still need that ID scanner!"
Maybe the focus should be on a free (government funded, ideally FOSS) parental controls software suite that makes blocking social media on all major platforms (iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, and Linux) simple and easy. Promote it to parents, and get them to parent, instead of deanonymizing the internet for everyone.
The bans are for under 16s, not just 7 year olds. Parents don't control all internet activity for 15 years, at that age they are going to have some autonomy outside of the house.
I'm not sure there is a direct irl analog when it comes to controlling digital spaces, since they are personal by nature. and I think this is where the debate comes in.
Should parents be following their teenage child into every store to make sure they aren't buying alcohol?
I get the concern with providing social media companies a government ID, I certainly would never give them one! I would just not use them. But they provide net negative value in my opinion so no loss.
I like the idea of FOSS parental controls.
But nobody does that, and the problem is getting worse.
What's your answer if you can't get a population to make better choices and people are being harmed by something?
I'm not saying there's a right answer here, I am genuinely looking for alternatives on a societal level to address a proven health problem.
Not to say it's never the parents fault...