Preventing under-16s from having social media accounts won’t necessarily stop them from using them. In fact, it may push their activity underground. If governments want to protect young people, investment in digital literacy, media education and platform design changes will be arguably more effective than age bans that are easy to bypass.

The social media ban for young people has massive potential implications for teenagers' and children's healthy and productive enjoyment of digital games and play, and their participation in the social worlds of their peers. At the same time, however, at a time of increasing gambling-related content on many major sites, it's important to think about how to reduce young people's exposure to such material – all of which shows the difficulty in a broad-brush approach that bans entire sites or platforms where so much online life takes place.

Australia’s social media ban is already driving change, and is proof that the threat of regulation works, even before the law takes effect. Waiting for perfect policy risks paralysis when real progress is already within reach.

The introduction of the social media minimum age framework is a pathbreaking measure by the Australian Federal Government. While Australia is the first to adopt such restrictions, it is unlikely to be the last. Many governments around the world are watching how the power of Big Tech was successfully taken on and are considering their own measures to address the adverse consequences of platform power.

The upcoming social media ban is a positive step forward for the mental health of teens in Australia. Young people face enormous pressures to show up online through socialising with peers, seeking and providing validation, and expressing oneself. Social media is a breeding ground for comparison and subsequent mental health struggles, regardless of age, so reducing this wherever possible can assist in delaying the age these pressures are placed on young people. We must acknowledge however that a blanket ban is not a perfect solution. Teens may now seek out alternatives, which may result in them using less regulated platforms than those facing the ban, such as Instagram.

Social media isn’t just a pastime for kids – it’s deeply embedded in their daily lives, how they connect with friends, express themselves, and develop their social identity. Removing it is a massive behaviour change that could leave them feeling isolated, disrupt routines, and even affect how they’ve learned to express themselves. But even something that seems like a limitation could open the door to learning healthier emotion regulation strategies that can result in improved well-being over time.

If implemented well, the legacy of 10 December should not simply be that children were kept off certain platforms, but that industry incentives were shifted, and that measurable improvements in children’s mental health, safety and participation become the standard against which digital services are judged.

The introduction of the social media age restrictions for children on 10 December marks a long-overdue recalibration of responsibility in the digital environment. 

For years, technology companies have been presented with clear research, regulator guidance and survivor testimony about the harms experienced by children on their platforms. They have had ample warning and time to embed safety by design, yet responses have too often been piecemeal and reactive. 

In practice, we have seen a pattern where growth and revenue have been prioritised, and children’s safety has been treated as a secondary consideration – a classic case of profit over protection. In that light, the new restrictions are not an overreach; they are a response to a systemic failure of self-regulation. 

The challenge now is to ensure that this delay is accompanied by rigorous age-assurance, independent oversight of platform practices, and investment in education and support for families.

We do not yet have any evidence that social media bans are effective at addressing social media harms, but we do have ample evidence that young people – especially vulnerable young people – find social connection and support on social media.

It may seem appealing to believe that a ban will provide a solution to the complicated challenge that is navigating social media with young people. Unfortunately, the reality is that there is little evidence to suggest these kinds of bans are effective, and some evidence to suggest it could cause harm. What we do know is that it is important to talk to your children about social media, and build trust with them so that when they encounter something inappropriate or unsafe, they feel comfortable talking to you about it.

It is also important to remember that social media can play a significant role in young people's social lives. Having this taken away may be upsetting, and parents should be prepared for that reaction. I would encourage parents to take their children’s feelings seriously. Remember that children growing up now don’t tend to have the same freedom to roam as you might have had growing up, so social media may have filled the social gap for some young people. Try not to dismiss any feelings and consider ways for children to connect with peers, even if they aren’t physically nearby.

Regulation to protect minors (and consumers more generally) from making choices that may be harmful to themselves is commonplace in Australia. The social media ban, however, represents a significant extension of past regulation, and a new high-water mark in the state’s paternalism. 

Within it, there is also an irony. The social media ban is a statement by government that parents are unable or unwilling to regulate their own children's behaviour. At the same time, while primary responsibility for enforcing the ban lies with social media platforms, effective enforcement also will depend on those same parents educating children about the ban and encouraging (if not enforcing) compliance.  

And beware the ‘forbidden fruit effect’. Regulatory prohibitions and restrictions entice the rebellious and curious to experiment with the prohibited activity - many children will seek to circumvent the ban. And the unscrupulous and criminal will exploit the opportunities this presents. Prohibition has a poor track record of success.

LGBTIQA+ youth in Australia rely heavily on social media for mental health support, connection, community building and identity development. It is vital that these resources will now be accessible offline, especially in rural and unsupportive environments.

Almost three-quarters of young trans Australians report that using social media makes them feel better about themselves, and 91% of LGBTIQA+ youth in a national survey said social media helped them connect with others like them. A ban is likely to sever these crucial lifelines.

For queer youth, the ban may reduce the immediate risks associated with social media, such as exposure to homophobic or transphobic cyberbullying, harmful content and predatory behaviours. However, this positive impact is contingent on the availability of strong, supportive offline communities and resources (which are all too often lacking for queer youth, especially in regional and remote communities).

Restricting access is likely to deepen isolation, hinder self-expression and limit participation in civic and cultural life, which are rights protected under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, an international treaty that Australia has ratified. While the ban aims to protect children from online harms, it risks disproportionately affecting vulnerable youth who are already facing discrimination and exclusion offline.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child recognises children’s rights to freedom of expression and access to information (Article 13), and to participate in matters affecting them (Article 12). The Convention also recognises the importance of ensuring children’s access to diverse media, including content that supports their well-being (Article 17), which can include LGBTIQA+-affirming resources and online communities. The social media ban potentially violates these international laws that are in place to protect the rights of children.

Parents have a key role to play in helping children understand and adapt to these changes. Particularly for those who spend a lot of time on social media now, the changes are likely to come with a range of emotions, from anxiety or grief to anger. If social media is already a big part of their lives, they may struggle to find replacements that meet their needs in the same way, including the need for connection, self-expression, and to seek support, especially if they’re unable to find support offline.

The first thing you should do, before even raising the topic with your children, is to do your research. Equip yourself with accurate information and know how to answer their questions or correct any dis- or misinformation they may bring up. The Australian eSafety Commissioner’s website is a great place to start.

When speaking with your children, be mindful of your tone and your own view of the changes. If they sense you are judgmental or forceful, they may not be honest about how they really feel. Also try to avoid reacting negatively to any emotional outbursts your children may have. The focus should be on showing empathy, validating their feelings and keeping the dialogue open. Be aware of who is influencing their opinions on the topic. This could be friends, public figures, or even social media influencers. That insight will help you understand their logic and can inform your discussions.

For some parents, these kinds of conversations will be new. Not all families talk openly about their online lives. This is a great opportunity to develop a more open and trusting dialogue with your children on this topic. It’s possible, if this is the first time you are discussing it with them, that you may be surprised by your child’s social media usage. Please try to pause and breathe before reacting. Again, you don’t want to shut that door and make your children think they have to hide things from you for fear of upsetting or angering you. Creating a safe space for your children to talk openly will strengthen your relationship and enable you to help them navigate the dynamic digital world they are growing up in.

Australia’s social media ban for under-16s takes effect on 10 December, marking a major and controversial shift in digital governance. Promoted as a child-safety measure, the law requires platforms to take “reasonable steps” to block underage accounts. Yet uncertainty around scope, enforcement, privacy, and age verification raises serious doubts about its effectiveness. The legislation risks unintended harms. Platforms where children and young people are exposed to harms may not be covered by the ban. Even without accounts, harmful content remains accessible on platforms like YouTube and TikTok. 

The ban undermines the rights of children under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, including their rights to freedom of expression, association, and access to information. From an Australian constitutional perspective, the proposed ban also invites scrutiny under the implied freedom of political communication, as will be argued in a High Court challenge. Given social media platforms constitute forums for political and social engagement for young people, restricting access could be viewed as a burden on political communication. There are other better proposals, such as further reforming Australia’s privacy regulations and imposing a duty of care, which are better placed to protect children online. The High Court will ultimately determine the ban’s validity, but questions remain about whether prohibition is the right path forward.

The government’s social media ban is a reinforcement of the importance of dealing with the known harms of social media when it comes to adolescents’ mental health, sense of identity, and body image. It provides a welcome ‘window of opportunity’ – a chance to apply what we’ve learned through the substantial amount of research in this field, and the valuable resources that have already been developed.

These resources can be used to help parents and young people cultivate the skills needed to navigate social media effectively and positively when the time comes. It would be incredible to see young people entering the world of social media equipped with skills of self-awareness, compassion for themselves and others, and the ability to critically consider the content they’re consuming.

This ban sends a powerful message to social media platforms, asking them to take greater responsibility and improve their practices to ensure the well-being of young people, not just in Australia but all over the world.

While the nation’s social media ban is hoped to safeguard young people from the dangers of the online space, it has the potential to impact the development of their political knowledge.

While governments may pursue ambitions to build the political knowledge of young people, the responsibility to design and deliver civics and citizenship classes is with teachers. For some teachers, social media was an important way of allowing young people to be exposed to political debates and issues around the world.

Students who may have relied on social media for their political development will have to find new sources. Therefore, the implementation of the ban presents the ideal opportunity to better support teachers.

The social media ban is truly world-leading legislation that recognises that social media currently does not work in the public interest for any of us. While it is electorally popular to 'protect the children', there is no particular reason that children are any more susceptible than adults to the harms that social media may pose.

The government should play a more central role in trying to contain the social harms of social media, not just pursuing a 'symbolic policy' of protecting children but introducing standards of accuracy, responsibility and quality to social media regulation.

In an age of AI, propaganda and disinformation, the absence of legislation around publishing misinformation on social media, and the disincentivisation of critical information literacy training in universities (through the Job Ready Graduates program that has increased the cost of studying areas such as critical thinking (philosophy), history, political theory and media literacy) is a perfect storm for creating a disenfranchised and easily manipulated public.

"Australia’s social media ban for under-16s aims to protect young people from harm – but is it cutting off the branches while leaving the roots? Rather than prohibition, Australia could lead the world by trialling privacy-friendly tools that help detect harmful behaviour and alert trusted adults so they can assist children to stay safely connected online.

Other global studies have warned that blanket bans are too blunt and lack empirical support. Most Australian children (85%) already use social media despite age limits, and 95% of parents rank online safety as their top concern. Could this ban drive young people to create fake accounts or use VPNs, making harms harder to monitor?

If this ban fails, visibility may be the key to protection. Privacy-respectful analytics can track public data, detect bullying or distress, and provide simple wellbeing reports to trusted adults. These tools enable parents, schools and communities to step in early and support young people, without cutting them off from connection, which itself is linked to better mental health.

Could this ban drive young people to create fake accounts or use VPNs, making harms harder to monitor?"

"The social media ban for young people couldn't come soon enough. The evidence linking social media addiction and significant physical and mental health issues in young people is overwhelming. It paints a bleak future for our youth and calls for an urgent and significant change.

Young people remain vulnerable and need our protection. For too long, we have watched our kids be lured in by tantalising social media platforms purposely created to capture their attention, glue them to their screens and fuel addiction. Our young people and their developing brains don't stand a chance against these conglomerates, so while a ban seems extreme, a change is urgently needed.

Teachers, particularly Health and Physical Education teachers, will play a pivotal role in helping young people navigate the shift and understand the significant health benefits it may unlock. Guidance and support for parents, caregivers and teachers is needed for effective implementation of the ban. While it will inevitably have teething issues and be difficult to enforce, it's a step in the right direction. As the nation moves toward implementation, Australians should take pride in leading the global conversation on youth digital safety. If we don’t act to protect the next generation, who will?”

“The social media ban is an important first step in ensuring children return to a healthy developmental environment for their physical, psychosocial and emotional development.

All of these are foundations to building good interpersonal relationships, self-regulation and advanced cognitive skills such as critical thinking and theory of mind (understanding the mindsets, intentions and agendas of other people).

The logistics of the ban remain under question, and I look forward to seeing how this will be managed. However, if successful, this will give parents and families the opportunity to reclaim childhood, and ensure the building blocks of the brain are set in place before exposure to what has proved to be a most pernicious influence.

I suspect the rest of the world is taking such an extraordinary interest in this Australian initiative, to see when and how they can best follow suit for improved wellbeing of their future generations.

There are literally thousands of social media platforms, and the government will not be able to police all of them."

"The social media ban feels like a temporary fix for a much deeper problem. While I applaud the intention to protect young Australians from online harms, restricting access alone won’t build the skills they need to navigate an increasingly complex digital world.

We need to be investing in more impactful, long-term solutions—such as co-designed tools and comprehensive digital literacy programs that genuinely strengthen young people’s ability to use social media safely and confidently. Social media can affect adults too, and if we don’t equip young people with the skills to cope in digital environments, today’s vulnerable teens will become tomorrow’s vulnerable adults."

"I think this is generally a good move and that it will take some time to adjust.

There will likely be some hiccups and issues along the way and we should not be discouraged by that. It’s important this week to talk to your teens and encourage them to move their tribe to a messaging app. There’s not much point moving to lemon8 for example: if lemon8 meets the criteria for a social media app it’ll just get locked down too.

Don’t build your house on sand. Pick a messaging app."

"Australia’s social media age ban repeats a familiar policy mistake: treating young people as a problem to be contained, rather than as capable digital citizens who deserve support, opportunity, and care. A deficit lens sees only risk and harm. It ignores the rich evidence that young people use networked technologies to create culture, build identity, find community, and participate in public life.

Bans are a blunt instrument. They remove access without building any of the scaffolding that actually keeps children safe. Experience shows that exclusion simply pushes digital participation into less visible spaces, often with fewer safeguards, and we are already seeing these predictable migrations in the lead-up to the ban. What Australia needs is not a knee-jerk prohibition, but to continue work on a proactive digital duty of care that places responsibility on the platforms shaping young people's online environments.

A duty of care approach recognises that risks are real, but so is children's agency. It emphasises safer product design, meaningful controls, transparency, and clear accountability when systems put young people in harm's way. It also recognises young people as partners in shaping better digital futures, not just subjects of restriction.

If we want technology to serve children's rights, the question shouldn't be 'how do we stop them?', but 'how do we support them to thrive?'."

"The ban on social media is more than removing kids’ access to frivolous TikTok videos or potentially harmful sites. It is fundamentally a philosophical and moral issue about how we are positioning young people as “responsibilised” for the problems created by adults.

Adults created the internet and social media platforms for profit, and the harmful content on it, and then we gave it to children like candy. Now we want to take it away from them, leaving some of them - especially those who are vulnerable and isolated - to work out how to stay connected for themselves. Yes, young people need to be protected from danger and we have historically taught young people how to help themselves be protected from harm, e.g., ‘stranger danger’, crossing a busy road, etc.

Australia’s national curriculum for Foundation to Year 10 provides plenty of opportunities to assist young people with navigating the complex online world. For example, Digital Literacy, one of the General Capabilities, “involves students critically identifying and appropriately selecting and using digital devices or systems, and learning to make the most of the technologies available to them”; Also, the Australian English curriculum provides opportunity for critical evaluating texts such as social media posts and my research shows that teachers are already doing this."

"In practice, this law is a large-scale experiment. Its success will depend less on how it is implemented, how appeals work, and whether it is coupled with broader digital literacy, parenting support and platform design changes and platform support. Australia is turning itself into a test case for age-gating social media - the world will be watching both the benefits and the unintended consequences."

"Australia’s social media restrictions launch on 10 December and children under 16 have been advised to download their existing content prior to having their accounts closed. However, this does not “ban” all under-16s from social media. The legislation only requires that technology companies take “reasonable steps” to keep children from holding or creating accounts on some platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and others. This may leave parents who believe all children will be blocked from social media with a false sense of security, particularly given content on many platforms (e.g., YouTube) can be accessed in a logged-out state, without needing an account.

Technology companies cannot only request ID for age assurance, but they can ask for ID if other approaches do not accurately estimate users’ ages. Meta has advised, for example, that it will use facial scanning as a first step for age assurance, but these technologies have typical error rates between 1-3 years. This means a 17-year-old may be blocked from accessing their account, if the technology estimates them to be younger than 16, and be required to provide evidence of their real age. This also means a 15-year-old could be misidentified as over 16 and given access to the platform inappropriately.

Snapchat has advised they will offer users three options of assuring age - i.e., through their bank accounts using Connect ID software, by uploading a selfie via Singapore-based software k-ID, or by uploading a government-issued ID. However, these approaches may raise privacy concerns for users worried about data breaches of personal information. As each technology platform can use their own method of conducting age assurance, users with accounts on several platforms may find they need to assure age with a different process for each account.

There are many potential workarounds children may use to get around the social media restrictions. They could use VPNs to pretend they are located in other countries; they could ask an older sibling, parent, or other adult to take a selfie to bypass restrictions; or they may access content while logged out of the platform. Children have also been posting to social media to say they will move to platforms that are not yet covered by the ban (e.g., Lemon8; Yope; RedNote). The government says it expects all platforms to self-assess whether they fall under the restrictions. The government has already put Lemon8 and Yope on notice that their platforms may fall under the legislation, with other platforms likely to be added to the restricted list in the coming weeks and months."