That is the primary time Australia, certainly, any nation, has launched a legislation aimed toward decreasing the dangers and dangerous content material that youngsters are uncovered to on social media, which is designed to maintain customers hooked to those platforms for longer, pulling younger youngsters who’re already susceptible into the lure of likes and negatively affecting their psychological well being.
With Australia’s world-first social media ban for kids beneath 16 only a week away, we break down what the ban is about, the way it works, which platforms are affected, and whether or not youngsters will be capable of enchantment to reverse the ban.
From psychological well being points to pornography
At first look, Instagram could seem innocent, a social platform the place customers can share images and movies with the world. However beneath the floor, Instagram has develop into addictive for a lot of; some even examine it to a drug.
Nevertheless, the true drawback is in what’s proven to us and the way a lot it diverges from actuality. Influencers promote smartphones, flats, cosmetics, resorts, and accommodations, all within the identify of a life-style that extraordinary individuals “aspire” to.
In actuality, most of what you see on social media is paid content material, and that’s how the influencer economic system works. Anybody can develop into an influencer and begin an Instagram web page or YouTube channel with zero followers and chase on-line fame, however creators usually are not certain to the bastion of reality and due to this fact lack ethical accountability.
Whereas this technique advantages manufacturers and influencers, it has harmed customers’ psychological well being. Youngsters take excessive steps to seem like sure celebrities, influencers pose as dieticians, and youthful generations are focused with beauty procedures like Botox and are offered to attain a sure look.
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The Australian authorities says the restriction is required to counter the worsening psychological well being disaster brought on by extreme social media use. (File Picture)
A research printed in The Lancet revealed that 27 per cent of teenagers who steadily used social media reported excessive psychological stress. In one other research, 14- to 17-year-olds whose social media utilization exceeded seven hours per day had been greater than twice as more likely to have been recognized with despair.
Platforms like Instagram have develop into a gateway to pornographic content material and a spot the place drug sellers use faux accounts to supply non-medical and pharmaceutical medicine on the market, as younger youngsters and teenagers make up the most important person base on these social media platforms.
Social media platforms have additionally been accused of failing to guard the web’s most susceptible customers, with LGBTQ individuals specifically being focused with homophobic slurs, cyberbullying, and harassment.
Whereas there are some advantages, social media use poses a profound danger of hurt to youngsters, which is why there are rising voices calling for tighter rules on social media platforms and the way they function.
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What’s Australia’s social media ban?
Merely put, when the ban goes into impact, hundreds of thousands of accounts on Instagram, TikTok, and different platforms held by youngsters beneath 16 will likely be deactivated. The ban was handed into legislation in November 2024 and is supported by nearly all of Australians.
The Australian authorities says it’s defending youngsters from dangerous content material, together with inflicting misinformation, enabling bullying and spreading dangerous depictions of physique picture.
The ban, a historic transfer, will take a look at whether or not social media platforms are doing sufficient to stop youngsters beneath 16 from accessing them.
The Australian authorities started consultations in 2023 on age-based restrictions, which laid the groundwork for drafting the modification to the On-line Security Act, 2021.
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The proposed laws, titled the On-line Security Modification (Social Media Minimal Age) Invoice, 2024, was launched within the nation’s parliament on November 21, 2024, and handed by means of each Homes, amending the On-line Security Act 2021. It obtained Royal Assent on December 10, 2024.
To offer platforms time to conform, enforcement beneath Part 63E was delayed by as much as 12 months.
On July 29, 2025, Minister for Communications Anika Wells set December 10, 2025, because the date Part 63D would take impact and issued guidelines clarifying which providers are exempt from the age restrictions.
The legislation establishes particular necessities for kids’s entry to social media platforms, essentially the most notable being a ban in Australia on youngsters beneath 16 from holding accounts on these platforms. Tech firms working social media platforms will likely be anticipated to introduce and implement age gating to stop youngsters from utilizing the platforms.
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It additionally has compliance necessities, privateness protections, civil penalties, and regulatory oversight.
Australia’s ban on social media for kids beneath 16 may very well be a landmark invoice if carried out appropriately. (File Picture)
Which platforms will likely be banned and which will likely be exempted?
The Australian authorities has included Snapchat, Fb, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, X, and YouTube on the listing of platforms, making certain that younger Australians can’t maintain accounts on them.
Nevertheless, the federal government has famous that this can be a dynamic listing and extra platforms may very well be added at a later stage. That is to deal with the scenario through which youngsters transfer to a different platform after the ban takes impact; comparable guidelines will apply.
Platforms akin to YouTube Children, Google Classroom, WhatsApp, and job platforms like LinkedIn are exempt from the ban. The ban additionally doesn’t apply to Pinterest.
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In the meantime, gaming platforms akin to Roblox and Discord have lately launched age checks on some options to keep away from being affected by the ban.
How will the ban be enforced?
The ban doesn’t punish youngsters or their dad and mom. As an alternative, it targets social media platforms, which will likely be held accountable and required to implement the principles. In any other case, they might face fines of as much as $49.5 million ($32 million) for severe or repeated breaches.
Platform holders are within the highlight, and to adjust to the modification’s necessities, the federal government says these firms should take “affordable steps.”
The legislation doesn’t specify what expertise must be used or how age must be verified. The one requirement from the federal government is that requesting ID can’t be the only technique of age verification.
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How are social media platforms adhering to the ban?
Meta, the corporate behind Fb, Instagram, and Threads, says it’ll begin eradicating youngsters and youngsters from its platforms from December 4. It’s encouraging youngsters beneath 16 to obtain their content material earlier than the ban takes impact.
There are round 350,000 Instagram customers aged 13–15 in Australia, and roughly 150,000 Fb accounts.
Snap, in the meantime, says customers can deactivate their accounts for as much as three years, or till they flip 16. The corporate said that customers can confirm their age utilizing financial institution accounts or photograph IDs, or by taking a selfie, which will likely be used to estimate their age.
Final month, TikTok informed the Australian Parliament that it’s growing a button to report suspected underage customers. The social media platform has over 200,000 customers aged 13 to fifteen in Australia.
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Native Australian media beforehand reported that Google-owned YouTube has been contemplating legally difficult its inclusion within the under-16s social media ban. The platform argued that YouTube just isn’t a social media platform however a video streaming service, and due to this fact shouldn’t be included within the ban.
One other concern raised is that the ban may represent an “impermissible fetter” on the implied constitutional freedom of communication on YouTube, which might stop these beneath 16 from contributing “to political communication by posting movies on YouTube and by making feedback on these movies,” as reported in The Guardian.
Whereas tech platforms don’t have any alternative however to adjust to the ban or danger fines, most are based mostly within the US and have opposed the legislation. In truth, highly effective foyer teams representing US tech giants Meta and Alphabet, Google’s dad or mum firm, are urging President Donald Trump to reprimand Australia over the social media ban that might hamper their progress within the nation.
What has been the response to Australia’s social media ban for kids?
The Australian legislation has sparked controversy and divided opinion, with some critics arguing that the ban compromises youngsters’s autonomy and freedom of speech.
In truth, two 15-year-olds, Noah Jones and Macy Neyland, are difficult the legislation within the nation’s highest court docket, arguing that as a substitute of banning social media platforms, the main target must be on banning dangerous content material.
Some additionally argue that the ban on social media for these beneath 16 may trigger extra hurt, isolating youngsters and slicing them off from the remainder of the world. Others notice that, since youngsters are digitally savvy, they could discover methods to bypass the ban by opening new accounts with faux ages.
The federal government, nevertheless, has warned social media firms that it expects them to detect and take away such accounts.
Influencers painting a shiny model of their lives, giving a false sense of actuality, and younger teenagers come beneath their affect. (Picture credit score: Google Gemini)
What are others doing to deal with youngsters’s use of social media?
Different nations world wide are carefully watching how this legislation is carried out, what works, what doesn’t, and, most significantly, how successfully Australia manages to ban using social media for these beneath 16, as that is being finished for the primary time, regardless that the variety of social media customers within the nation is small in comparison with markets like Indonesia and India.
India has no particular authorized restrictions stopping youngsters from utilizing social media. Nevertheless, the Digital Private Knowledge Safety Act, 2023, requires stricter safeguards for processing youngsters’s information, mandating that information fiduciaries receive “verifiable parental consent” for people beneath 18.
Earlier this 12 months, New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon, proposed introducing the same invoice to limit youngsters’s social media use. The draft invoice is modelled on Australian legal guidelines and would require digital platforms to confirm customers’ ages or face heavy fines.
Indonesia, too, has stated it’s making ready laws to guard younger individuals from “bodily, psychological, or ethical perils.” Though the federal government has but to announce a selected age restrict, it says strict regulation is required. Denmark is one other nation that introduced that it will even be banning social media use for kids beneath 15.
In the UK, the On-line Security Act imposes an obligation of care on social media corporations and different user-generated content material websites, requiring them to take duty for dangerous content material uploaded and unfold on their platforms.
Earlier this 12 months, new provisions within the On-line Security Act got here into impact, requiring giant on-line platforms to implement age checks to stop youngsters from accessing pornographic and inappropriate materials. Nevertheless, this sparked backlash from each UK web customers and US politicians over considerations about on-line privateness and censorship.
In the US, the Youngsters’s On-line Privateness Safety Act (COPPA) has been in impact since 2000, and has been revised a number of occasions. The legislation restricts the gathering of private data from youngsters beneath age 13 and applies to social media platforms.