Can children and teens be forced to stop social media en masse? Australia is about to find out.
More than a million social media accounts owned by users under 16 are set to be deactivated in Australia on Wednesday, in a divisive world-first ban that has ignited a culture war and is being closely watched in the United States and elsewhere.
Social media companies will have to take “reasonable steps” to ensure people under 16 in Australia are unable to create accounts on their platforms and deactivate or remove existing accounts.
Australian officials say the historic ban, which lawmakers quickly approved late last year, is intended to protect children from addiction to social media platforms that experts say can be disastrous to their mental health.
“With one law, we can protect Generation Alpha from being sucked into purgatory by predatory algorithms that the man who created the feature described as ‘behavioral cocaine,’” Communications Minister Annika Wales said. He told the National Press Club In Canberra last week.
While many parents and even their children have welcomed the ban, others say it will hinder young people’s ability to express themselves and connect with others, as well as access online support which is crucial for those from marginalized groups or living in isolated parts of rural Australia. Two 15-year-olds have filed a legal challenge against him with the country’s highest court.
Supporters say the rest of the world will soon follow the example set by the Australian ban, which has faced fierce resistance from social media companies.
“I always referred to this as the first domino, and that’s why they backed down,” Julie Inman-Grant, who regulates online safety as Australia’s e-safety commissioner, said at an event in Sydney last week.
Social media companies will be responsible for enforcing the ban, and paying fines of up to 49.5 Australian dollars (about $32 million) for serious or repeated violations. Children and parents will not be penalized for any violations.
Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, X, Snapchat and Reddit are all set to be age-restricted under the law, according to a list shared by the e-Safety Commissioner. All platforms said they would comply, and some took action before the ban went into effect, with Meta saying last month that it would begin shutting down Instagram, Threads and Facebook accounts on December 4.
The ban enjoys widespread support in Australia, with a YouGov poll conducted last year showing that 77% of respondents support it. Supporters say it will encourage children to prioritize personal interactions and enhance their social skills.
“Social media is a misnomer,” said Jane Hamelshog, 45, mother of 12-year-old Nina. “Apps want kids to focus on their phones and not their friends.”
Nina does not have a phone or any social media accounts. She supports the intention of the ban, arguing that social media is a powerful distraction for young people.
“When I’m trying to chat to someone, they might say, ‘Just a minute,’ and they’re doing something on social media,” she said in a phone interview from Canberra.
According to A National study Commissioned by the Australian Government this year, 96% of 10-15 year olds use social media. Seven in 10 of them had been exposed to harmful content and behavior, including misogynistic material, combat videos and content promoting eating disorders and suicide.
One in seven also reported having experienced grooming behavior from adults or older children, and more than half said they had been victims of cyberbullying.
William Young, 14, said that most social media platforms, in their current form, are unsafe for children, citing “Snapchat” as an example.
“You can be friends with anyone without knowing who they are,” he said in a phone interview from Perth. “It deletes messages after you send them… It’s not a good platform.”
He appealed to the affected platforms to “do the right thing” by the youth and prioritize making their platforms safer.
The platforms say they share this goal and insist that bans will make young users less safe.
“Separating teens from their friends and family doesn’t make them safer — it may even push them to use less secure and less private messaging apps,” Snap He said in a statement last month.
The platforms also argue that young users may turn to new, unregulated apps that push them into dark corners of the internet or may try to circumvent bans using virtual private networks, or VPNs, which Australian teens do not object to.
“Young people will find another way to overcome this problem,” Chloe Song, 14, said in a Zoom interview from Melbourne. “Strict parents create sneaky children.”
She said she and her peers would benefit more from better digital literacy programs in their schools.
“The next generation is in our hands,” said Chloe, a member of the organization. Project Rocketan Australian youth-led movement against bullying, hate and prejudice.
She said that if young people are prevented from using social media, “we are not learning life skills and we are not learning the experience of going through and knowing what is safe and what is not safe.”
Susan Grantham, a social media researcher at Griffith University in Brisbane, described the ban as a “step in the right direction” but not a solution in itself.
“Social media is not going away,” she said. “Instead, we need to create balanced digital citizens.”
What angers many young Australians about the ban is what Noah Jones described as a lack of consultation on “legislation that particularly affects us”.
Noah, 15, one of the two teens who sued the Australian government over the ban, said he and his peers have “solutions to all the negatives of social media.”
“If we had just been asked, we could all have solved the problem,” he said in email comments.
Noah says the ban would deprive young people of the freedom to communicate politically, a right implicit in the Australian Constitution, and deprive them of an essential educational tool.
“Do you want 15-year-old boys who have no idea about consent? Do you want teenagers who don’t know about the dangers of vaping? I’ve learned about both topics on social media,” he said.
Wales, the communications minister, said the centre-left government would not be intimidated by the legal challenges and that it “remains steadfast on the side of parents”.
Others are relieved by the ban, including Alia Al-Ashi and her father, Danny.
Danny Al-Ashi said that Alia’s behavior changed within days of her obtaining a smartphone at the age of ten.
“We found that she had withdrawn into her room, into her own world, her own space, and we didn’t think that would be healthy for her in the long term,” he said in a phone interview from Sydney.
When the phone broke a few months later, Aaliyah’s parents never replaced it.
Now 16, Aaliyah will be able to use social media legally, but she never had any accounts and said that isn’t about to change.
“I’m still as tech savvy as any 16-year-old. I don’t have TikTok or Instagram eating up hours of my childhood every day,” Alia told New South Wales state lawmakers last month.
“Having strict boundaries around social media has not made my life any smaller,” she said. “I hope in the next few years I will not be the exception, but the rule.”