Australia Is About To Ban Social Media For Under-16s. What Will That Look Like (And Is It A Good Idea?)

It’s nearly December, which – if you’re a tween in Australia – means it’s just weeks until your TikTok and Snapchat accounts go dark. The nation down under is about to become the world’s first home of a total ban on social media for under-16s, with the blackout set to kick off on December 10.

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But what does that mean? Is it a good idea? Will it work? We have the answers.

What Australia’s ban will look like

About a year ago, when Australia first announced its upcoming social media ban for teens, the main reaction was probably confusion. How would such a ban be implemented? Which platforms would count as “social media”? What would happen to those accounts already run by under-16s? And – if you’re Elon Musk – is this even legal?

Now, however, we know the answers to if not all, then at least most of those questions. 

So far, the ban is set to cover Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, Snapchat, X, YouTube, Reddit, Twitch, and Australian-based platform Kick. Platforms including YouTube Kids, Google Classroom, WhatsApp, Pinterest, and job platforms like LinkedIn have been spared.

But any social media mogul-to-be hoping to come up with a new, non-banned site should beware: the government has made it clear that this list is dynamic, able to be changed in the future should new platforms turn up with the same pitfalls as the current 10.

The onus is on the tech companies to enforce the bans. From December 10, those platforms on the list will be required to delete, deactivate, or “freeze” any account held by users deemed to be under 16 – as well as, of course, preventing any new underage users from creating accounts. If Australia’s eSafety commissioner does not consider that enough “reasonable steps” have been taken toward this, the platform will face a fine of up to AU$49.5 million (US$32m). 

That means no relying on the good old “I pinky promise I’m over 18” tick boxes we’re all so familiar with – but exactly what that’ll be replaced with will likely depend on the individual platform. “We found a plethora of approaches that fit different use cases in different ways, but we did not find a single ubiquitous solution that would suit all use cases,” concluded a government report trialing various age-assurance technologies for the ban. “Nor did we find solutions that were guaranteed to be effective in all deployments.”

Some of the companies included in the ban have been forthcoming about how they plan to verify age – Snapchat, for example, says it will use behavioral signals and self-reported birth dates to determine which users are under 16. 

Others are less open: TikTok announced a “multi-layered approach to age assurance” relying on “various technologies and signals” to confirm users’ ages – totally transparent, right? – while Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, flat-out refused to disclose its plans, arguing that doing so might help teens figure out how to flout them.

Either way, the moral is the same: from now on, it’s up to the tech companies to make this work – or else. And any who fail to meet that requirement can expect little sympathy from the government: as Communications Minister Anika Wells told reporters back in September, “There is no excuse for social media platforms not to have a combination of age assurance methods in their platforms ready for 10 December.”

“These are some of the world's richest companies. They are at the forefront of AI. They use the data that we give them for a bevy of commercial purposes,” she said. “I think it is reasonable to ask them to use that same data and tech to keep kids safe online.”

Why Australia wants a ban

If you’re after reasons to support restrictions on social media, the truth is that you don’t need to look that hard. The drawbacks of being all-online all the time run the whole gamut of severity, from “probably harmless” (see: mouth taping; spurious tinnitus cures) to “genuine world-ending shit” (see: facilitating genocide; endless climate misinformation; international election interference; etc.). 

Heck, you don’t even have to dig out any fancy-pants studies or investigations to know there’s something hinky going on – just think about how you feel every time you scroll your feed of choice. Use of social media, especially when you’re younger, has been linked to higher anxiety and misanthropy, lower self-esteem, more intense feelings of loneliness, and worse mental health generally. These sites are associated with rising eating disorder rates; they promote dangerous drug use and hawk allergy-causing skin creams to children. They interfere with our sleep. They’re arguably addictive. They are, in short, not good for us.

But here’s the problem: they’re not totally bad for us, either. Social network sites “clearly facilitate social interactions,” points out Niklas Ihssen, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Durham, “and [they] can generate a sense of belonging and self-worth.”

That’s true “especially in those who use them in an active (posting etc.) rather than a passive way (scrolling, social comparisons),” he tells IFLScience. 

And for every downside, there is an up. Instagram may host pro-ana thinspo, but social media is also where those recovering from eating disorders may find body-positive resources; X may allow for unprecedented levels of disinformation and pseudoscience, but in its former iteration as Twitter it also gave us the Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements. 

And if nothing else, it’s a way to make and maintain friendships, free from the constraints of geography or social strata. “For very shy or introverted young people, [social media] can be a way to meet others with similar interests,” pointed out Claude Mellins, Professor of Medical Psychology in the Departments of Psychiatry and Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia, in 2021. “During the pandemic, social media made it possible for people to connect in ways when in-person socialization was not possible.” 

“Social support and socializing are critical influences on coping and resilience,” Mellins said. “Friends we couldn’t see in person were available online and allowed us important points of connection.”

With that in mind, it’s not just Instagram-pilled teens who might consider a total ban on social media to be overkill. “In my view, the debate surrounding bans often conflates problematic content (abusive, misogynistic, provocation, hateful comments) and using social media as a social tool,” says Ihssen. 

That’s true even for younger users, he adds. “I appreciate that 11-, 12- or even 13-year-old children do not need to communicate online,” Ihssen tells IFLScience. But “for 14-15-year-olds, the consequences of taking away a large chunk of the platforms which they use to express themselves, to connect etc., need to be carefully thought through.”

The rise and rise of social media bans

Australia was not the first nation to restrict social media access for teens – France, for example, beat it to the punch with its June 2023 law requiring parental consent for under-15s. But that wasn’t an outright ban like Australia’s, and the sheer strength and scope of the upcoming crackdown is making international governments and companies sit up and take note.

For proof, look no further than Australia’s nearby neighbor to the north, Malaysia: only this past week, the nation’s government confirmed a similar move to ban social media accounts for under-16s beginning next year. That news, in turn, comes hot off the heels of plans to ban social media for under-15s in both Denmark and Norway, and calls for similar laws in France.

In other words: these bans probably aren’t going away any time soon. But in a world of VPNs and tech-savvy youth, can we really expect them to work in any case?

Well, to a certain extent, it doesn’t matter. “We don't argue that its implementation will be perfect,” Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese said in November 2024. It’s “just like [how] the alcohol ban for [children] under 18 doesn’t mean that someone under 18 never has access – but we know that it’s the right thing to do.”

Lower-level attempts to flout the ban probably won’t work – tech companies have already been warned to be alert for teens setting up new accounts with false birthdates, for example. But, “paradoxically,” Ihssen predicts a successful ban might be something of a self-fulfilling prophecy: “I think that […] if every teenager would believe that all other teenagers are not active on social media, they would just be fine with a ban,” he tells IFLScience. 

“However, the fear of missing out and the need to be part of a community of peers is so strong that just the knowledge of a few others being logged on will create strong pressures to be a part of this,” he warns.

Ultimately, the success or otherwise of Australia’s social media ban will be something seen in real-time – and with great interest – by observers around the world. For better or worse, Australian teens’ lives are about to change abruptly – and potentially much more dramatically than their parents’ generation might appreciate.

“In an ideal world, young people would be content with having real, [face-to-face] interactions,” Ihssen tells IFLScience. “However, they grow up in a highly digital world, so their social development is also digital.” 

“Being able to effortlessly connect with their peers, to share experiences and to find validation online is very much ingrained in young people’s life,” he says. “If a society finds that concerning, it needs to carefully consider what alternatives are available for young people to satisfy these social needs.”