Is it possible to massively push children and teenagers out of social networks? Australia is going to find out.
More than 1 million social media accounts belonging to users under 16 years of age, set to deactivate in Australia on Wednesday in a controversial world-first ban that has ignited a culture war and is being closely watched in the United States and other countries.
Social media companies will have to take “reasonable steps” to ensure children under 16 in Australia are unable to create accounts on their platforms and existing accounts are deactivated or deleted.
Australian officials talk about landmark ban that lawmakers quickly approved late last yearaims to protect children from addictive social media, which experts say can be detrimental to their mental health.
“With one law, we can protect Generation Alpha from being sucked into purgatory by predatory algorithms that the person who created this feature calls '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 prevent young people from expressing their opinions and connecting with others, as well as accessing online support that is crucial for marginalized groups or people living in isolated parts of rural Australia. Two 15 year old children filed a lawsuit against it to the highest court in the land.
Supporters say the rest of the world will soon follow the lead of Australia's ban, which has faced fierce resistance from social media companies.
“I've always called it the first domino, so they resisted,” 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 held accountable for enforcing the ban, paying fines of up to A$49.5 (about $32 million) for serious or repeated violations. Children and parents will not be punished for any violations.
According to a list published by the eSafety Commissioner, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, X, Snapchat and Reddit will have age restrictions under the law. All platforms said they would comply, and some took action even before the ban went into effect. Last month Meta said it would start closing Instagram, Threads and Facebook accounts December 4.
The ban has widespread support in Australia, where a YouGov poll last year found 77% of respondents supported it. Proponents say it will encourage children to prioritize face-to-face interactions, enhancing their social skills.
“Social media is a misnomer,” said Jen Hummelshoy, 45, mother of 12-year-old Nina. “Apps want kids to be focused on their phone, not their friends.”
Nina does not have a phone number or social media accounts. She supports the intent of the ban, arguing that social media is an overwhelming distraction for young people.
“When I try to talk to someone, they might say, 'Wait a minute' and do something on social media,” she said in a telephone interview from Canberra.
According to national survey According to the Australian government, 96% of children aged 10 to 15 use social media this year. Seven in 10 of them were exposed to harmful content and behavior, including misogynistic content, fight videos and content promoting eating disorders and suicide.
One in seven also said they had experienced grooming behavior from adults or older children, and more than half said they had been victims of cyberbullying.
William Young, 14, said most social media sites in their current form are unsafe for children, citing Snapchat as an example.
“You can friend anyone without knowing who they are. It deletes messages after they're sent… It's just not a good platform,” he said in a phone interview from Perth.
He called on the affected platforms to “do the right thing” by young people and make their platforms safer.
The platforms say they share this goal and insist that the ban will actually make young users less safe.
“Disconnecting teens from friends and family doesn't make them safer—it may push them to use less secure and less personal messaging apps,” Snap says the statement last month.
The platforms also claim 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 will find another way around this problem,” Chloe Song, 14, said in a Zoom interview from Melbourne. “Strict parents give birth to cunning children.”
She said she and her peers would benefit more from improved digital literacy programs in their schools.
“The next generation is in our hands,” said member Chloe Project RokitAustralian youth movement against bullying, hate and prejudice.
If young people are blocked on social media, “we just don't get life skills and experience going through and understanding what's safe and what's not,” she said.
Susan Grantham, a social media researcher at Griffith University in Brisbane, called the ban a “step in the right direction” but not a solution in itself.
“Social media is not going away. Instead, we need to create well-rounded digital citizens,” she said.
What worries 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 had “solutions to all the negative effects of social media”.
“If we had just been asked, we could have worked this out,” he said in emailed comments.
Noah argues the ban would deprive young people of freedom of political communication, an implied right enshrined in the Australian constitution, and deprive them of an important educational tool.
“You want 15-year-old boys to have no idea about consent? You want teenagers to have no idea about the dangers of vaping? Both topics I learned from social media,” he said.
Wells, the communications secretary, said the centre-left government would not be intimidated by legal challenges and that it “remains firmly on the side of parents”.
Others were relieved by the ban, including Aaliyah Elachi and her father Dani.
Dani Elachi said Aaliyah's behavior changed a few days after she received a smartphone at age 10.
“We found that she had gone into her room, into her private world, into her own space, and we didn't think that would be good for her in the long run,” he said in a telephone interview from Sydney.
When the phone broke a couple of months later, Aliya's parents never replaced it.
Now that Aaliyah is 16, she will be able to legally use social media, but she has never had an account and said she has no plans to change.
“I'm still as tech-savvy as the next 16-year-old. I just don't have TikTok or Instagram consuming hours of my childhood every day,” Aaliyah told lawmakers in NSW last month.
“Having strong boundaries around social media hasn’t made my life any less,” she said. “I hope that in the next few years I will become the norm rather than the exception.”
