Can children and teenagers be forced off social media en masse? Australia is about to find out.
More than 1 million social media accounts held by users under 16 are set to be deactivated in Australia on Wednesday in a divisive world-first ban that has inflamed 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 that under-16s in Australia cannot set up accounts on their platforms and that existing accounts are deactivated or removed.
Australian officials say the landmark ban, which lawmakers swiftly approved late last year, is meant to protect children from addictive social media platforms that experts say can be disastrous for their mental health.
“With one law, we can protect Generation Alpha from being sucked into purgatory by predatory algorithms described by the man who created the feature as ‘behavioral cocaine,’” Communications Minister Anika Wells 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 that is crucial for those from marginalized groups or living in isolated parts of rural Australia. Two 15-year-olds have brought a legal challenge against it to the nation’s highest court.
Supporters say the rest of the world will soon follow the example set by the Australian ban, which faced fierce resistance from social media companies.
“I’ve always referred to this as the first domino, which is why they pushed back,” Julie Inman Grant, who regulates online safety as Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, said at an event in Sydney last week.
Social media companies will be responsible for enforcing the ban, paying fines of up to 49.5 Australian dollars (about $32 million) for serious or repeated breaches. Children and parents will not be punished for any infringements.
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 eSafety Commissioner. All of the platforms have said they will comply, and some have taken action before the ban even takes effect, with Meta saying last month that it would start closing Instagram, Threads and Facebook accounts on Dec. 4.
The ban has broad support in Australia, where a YouGov poll last year found that 77% of respondents were in favor of it. Supporters say it will encourage children to prioritize in-person interactions, boosting their social skills.
“Social media is a misnomer,” said Jen Hummelshoj, 45, mother of 12-year-old Nina. “The apps want kids to be focused on their phone and not their friends.”
Nina does not have a phone or any social media accounts. She supports the ban’s intent, arguing that social media is an overpowering 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 the Australian government commissioned this year, 96% of children ages 10 to 15 use social media. Seven out of 10 of them have been exposed to harmful content and behavior, including misogynistic material, fight videos and content promoting eating disorders and suicide.
One in 7 also reported having experienced grooming-type behavior from adults or older children, and more than half said they had been the victims of cyberbullying.
William Young, 14, said most social media platforms, in their current form, were unsafe for children, citing Snapchat as an example.
“You can friend anyone without knowing who they are. It deletes messages after they’ve sent. … It’s just not a good platform,” he said in a phone interview from Perth.
He implored the affected platforms to “do right” by young people and prioritize making their platforms safer.
The platforms say they share that goal and insist that the ban will actually make young users less safe.
“Disconnecting teens from their friends and family doesn’t make them safer — it may push them to less safe, less private messaging apps,” Snap said in a statement last month.
The platforms also argue that young users may turn to new, unregulated apps that push them into darker corners of the internet or may try to circumvent the ban by using virtual private networks, or VPNs, which Australian teenagers do not dispute.
“Young people are going to find another way around it,” Chloe Song, 14, said in a Zoom interview from Melbourne. “Strict parents create, like, sneaky kids.”
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, who is a member of Project Rockit, a youth-driven Australian movement against bullying, hate and prejudice.
If young people are blocked from social media, “we just don’t learn the life skills and we don’t learn the experience of going through and knowing what’s safe and what’s not,” she said.
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 on its own.
“Social media is not going away. Instead, we need to create well-balanced digital citizens,” she said.
What rankles many young Australians about the ban is what Noah Jones described as a lack of consultation on “legislation that specifically affects us.”
Noah, 15, one of two teenagers suing the Australian government over the ban, said he and his peers have “solutions to all the negatives of social media.”
“If we just got asked, we all could’ve worked it out,” he said in emailed comments.
Noah argues the ban will deny young people freedom of political communication, an implied right in Australia’s constitution, and deprive them of an essential educational tool.
“Do you want 15-year-old boys to have no clue about consent? Do you want teenagers who don’t know about the dangers of vaping? Both topics I’ve learned about on social media,” he said.
Wells, the communications minister, said that the center-left government would not be intimidated by legal challenges and that it “remains steadfastly on the side of parents.”
Others are relieved by the ban, including Aalia Elachi and her father, Dany.
Dany Elachi said Aalia’s behavior changed within days of her receiving a smartphone at age 10.
“We found that she retreated into her room, into her own private world, her own private space, and we didn’t think that was, in the long run, going to be healthy for her,” he said in a phone interview from Sydney.
When the phone malfunctioned after a couple of months, Aalia’s parents never replaced it.
Now 16, Aalia will be able to legally use social media, but she has never had any accounts and said that is not about to change.
“I’m still as tech literate as the next 16-year-old. I just don’t have TikTok or Instagram eating up hours of my childhood every day,” Aalia told lawmakers in the state of New South Wales last month.
“Having firm boundaries around social media hasn’t made my life smaller,” she said. “My hope is over the next few years, I won’t be the exception, but the norm.”
