Australia has enacted a world-first ban on social media for users aged under 16, causing millions of children and teenagers to lose access to their accounts.
Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, YouTube, Snapchat, Reddit, Kick, Twitch and TikTok are expected to have taken steps from Wednesday to remove accounts held by users under 16 years of age in Australia, and prevent those teens from registering new accounts.
Platforms that do not comply risk fines of up to $49.5m.
There have been some teething problems with the ban’s implementation. Guardian Australia has received several reports of those under 16 passing the facial age assurance tests, but the government has flagged it is not expecting the ban will be perfect from day one.
All listed platforms apart from X had confirmed by Tuesday they would comply with the ban. The eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, said it had recently had a conversation with X about how it would comply, but the company had not communicated its policy to users.
Bluesky, an X alternative, announced on Tuesday it would also ban under-16s, despite eSafety assessing the platform as “low risk” due to its small user base of 50,000 in Australia.
Parents of children affected by the ban shared a spectrum of views on the policy. One parent told the Guardian their 15-year-old daughter was “very distressed” because “all her 14 to 15-year-old friends have been age verified as 18 by Snapchat”. Since she had been identified as under 16, they feared “her friends will keep using Snapchat to talk and organise social events and she will be left out”.
Others said the ban “can’t come quickly enough”. One parent said their daughter was “completely addicted” to social media and the ban “provides us with a support framework to keep her off these platforms”.
“The fact that teenagers occasionally find a way to have a drink doesn’t diminish the value of having a clear, national standard.”
Polling has consistently shown that two-thirds of voters support raising the minimum age for social media to 16. The opposition, including leader Sussan Ley, have recently voiced alarm about the ban, despite waving the legislation through parliament and the former Liberal leader Peter Dutton championing it.
The ban has garnered worldwide attention, with several nations indicating they will adopt a ban of their own, including Malaysia, Denmark and Norway. The European Union passed a resolution to adopt similar restrictions, while a spokesperson for the British government told Reuters it was “closely monitoring Australia’s approach to age restrictions”.
Some good silver linings here, but what everyone needs to remember here is that nobody would be supporting this at all if facebook wasn’t intentionally predatory and bad for (all) people’s brains.
If regulators in Australia had a spine they would call for an end to those practices, and now that’s infinitely harder to do
Some good silver linings here
Where?
The kids will move to less monitored platforms and even on things like YouTube, parental controls are now gone.
You need to have an account for parental controls to be applied to, kids aren’t allowed an account, vis-a-vis, no more parental controls or monitoring for problem content.
Wow I’m shocked you have no downvotes. I totally agree but Lemmy seems to hate internet restrictions, especially porn. Don’t come for their porn. They’ll destroy you.
Honestly it feels like you should regulate how Facebook can interact with children instead of the children’s access to it
That is why I think FB and others might been quietly lobbying for this solution. This way they can stll be predatory, as long as the kids pretend to be adult. Or just abuse adult users. The alternative, of not being evil, is not compatible with their business model. But it is the business model that should be banned, not socializing online by teenagers.
Tech giants are well known for lobbying against any legislation that gives them less freedoms to exploit markets and regulations of any kind that impact them - but this legislation that was targeted specifically at regulating them and removes a significant number of users - “this is suspicious, I think they might be the ones pushing it!”
There’s so many people in under this post trying to turn it into anything but what it is - legislation attempting to protect kids from the harms of social media. Which, again - are well documented.
That was my first reaction after processing the news–lets hold them accountable for hate, exploitation, etc.
If they can’t play nice they don’t get to do business at all.
just ban advertisements, it’s that easy
One parent said their daughter was “completely addicted” to social media
Have you tried parenting her?
Meh. It’s societal level issue. It should be handled at the societal level
Yah, a lot of people are raging at this but not providing any alternative to a studied and proven problem.
Yes. The societal level solution is the parents of the society choosing to do their jobs.
True, but there’s also a little more nuance.
For a social media ban to be effective without ostracizing individuals, it has to include the entire friend group.
As an analogy, if the kid’s friends all text each other, but your kid doesn’t have a phone, they miss out socially. They miss out on organized and impromptu hangouts. And they miss out on inside jokes that develop in the group chat. Over time they feel like more and more of an outsider even if the ready of the group actively tries to include them.
Parents who were can’t anymore, since there are no longer any parental controls.
“Give me your phone, give me your laptop” works pretty well.
My phone has a giant “setup parental controls” button. You can block specific websites using tools like PiHole that are easy to set up.
Lol ok just ask every parent who already can’t manage their children’s online habits to set up a pihole. I’m sure they won’t have any issues with that.
“One parent said their daughter was completely addicted to social media” Well then fucking take away her phone. Get her a dumb phone. Install parental controls. Go to a therapist if yo have to. But nooooo the government has got to do everything for us incompetent fucks
I had this issue with a 15 year old. Phone gone, just an analog flippy, put in parental controls to prevent loading brain rot apps.
He’s happier for it.
Absolutely. My kids are 11 and 9 and some of their friends have phones. I might provide a dumb phone when they’re a bit older, but if they want a smartphone they’ll.have to wait until they get a job and buy one.
As long as social media’s goals are commercial and have the effect of “digital cocaine”, keeping kids and adolescents out of it should be the default, worldwide.
The ban also affects everyone who isn’t willing to undergo the age check.
Kids will find a way around is. They’ll move to fediverse, and the cooler kids will still hang around the mainstream platforms thanks to their older friend, sibling or cool uncle.
The Fediverse is social media. Wouldn’t instances be required to do age verification? I mean, I guess that’d only be enforceable on Australian instances, but it seems like the whole world is going in that direction.
Lemmy requires you to be over 18 to open an account in Australia now.
It’s not designed to be perfect, it’s designed to influence a population towards better practices. If it even makes just 10% of young people grow up a little less alone and less asocial, it will be a success. That success can be built on and maybe in time we can push cultures in regions to not want to use social media as a substitute all the time. There is a very real effect how laws influence the attitudes of people.
It’s not designed at all. Some pearl-clutches said “won’t somebody think of the children”, and then made the social media companies figure out how to implement the ban.
The social media companies all looked at the free, government mandated access to user biometrics and complied.
Do I think that social media should be restricted for children and teens? Sure. Do I think this if going to go about as well as the 2007 porn filter that the government tried to implement? Absolutely.
Do I think that social media should be restricted for children and teens? Sure.
Okay, I agree and I am not exactly cheering for government telling anyone what they can and can’t look at… but what’s the alternative here? I am cautiously siding with the idea behind the regulation if not the execution, but so far nobody has suggested what we do about a problem that is real, proven and studied and is leading to a worse world.
I’m being serious here and in good faith. Should we do anything?
Am I in the wrong here for thinking we need to do something about this? Or is everyone just okay with whatever the end-result will be from subsequent generations of people growing up anxious, depressed, lacking social skills, without relationship partners? We already have “loneliness” being considered a global health risk, and it’s tied directly to digital communication habits. I would ask you or anyone here to just type “research on health social media teens” in google. Just try it and see how much work has gone into studying this problem.
yeah we need to do something about it, and people seem to be trying their best to come up with bullshit arguments against it. “people will find ways around it” and then saying not to bother etc i mean, people under 18 sneak into clubs and get beer… or maybe fake an ID and hit a pub… or get an older friend to do something for them… it doesnt stop us as a society holding a view that under age drinking isnt great, and we make some effort to enforce that even if its not perfect.
Props to Australia for creating a generation of kids with above average tech skills.
Not sure that’s a valid argument. Accessing social media is not a prerequisite to installing Linux on half-broken hardware
Instead of punishing these cancerous cess pool manipulative platforms, they punish the kids.
The youth deserves to be able to communicate and use the web the same as the rest of the population.
Regulations should be such that these platforms are neutral, non manipulative safe spaces where people can come together share content and discussions.
The overall stupidity of decision makers is incomprehensible to me. Literal shit sacks politicians that should all be thrown into a hole.
Beat of luck youth, my heart is with you. Hope Lemmy will be the answer(or some other decentralized platform)
It’s Australia, been heading in a fascist direction for the longest time, and people think it’s fine because it’s institutionalized direction, not a orange clown lead occurrence
Seems like the same story all around the world. Scary shit
But how will the sites make money? Will someone please think of the lost profit!!!??
They enforce laws that would punish the platforms if they dont abide by them. In what way are they not punishing the platform?
There will be other platforms and kids that deserve to be able to communicate will figure it out.
All i have to say about the ban is “fucking finally”. Cant wait for it to be enforced in Europe.
50mil for a company like meta is chump change, and it is not proportional to being a teen in today’s world locked out of all main communication hubs.
Youth are not the ones who need to ‘figure it out’. Massive companies, market leaders and decisions makers should, but they are all trash.
Its a sensationalist solution that will surely backfire, it only address symptoms while ignoring the underlying many many problems.
Very short sighted
It is for the people to understand not to use such garbage, yes. If they cant figure it out, there is always text and phones.
If it’s chump change, then why are they adhering to the new rules? There is something that you seem to have missed. You don’t seem to understand the manipulation that the social media companies are capable of, which is why rules are needed.
It is for the people to understand not to use such garbage, yes. If they cant figure it out, there is always text and phones.
You contradict yourself. So the ban is not needed? You were saying it’s up to the youths to find alternatives.
What I was saying that these platforms are toxic, they have a destructive affect on all, and we all deserve something better.
A government ban never worked on anything and jts the stupidest and laziest of all options.
If they cant figure out how to use other communication alternatives, they don’t deserve to use them. I can see how i fudged my words.
Ban it all, its a plague on civilization!
Ham Radio Time
Damn kids with their hunky dory gadgetry them should touch grass and live outdoors like good ol days /s
Just going to teach those kids its okay to break the law.
A lesson that is not incorrect. Depends on the law.
No offence, children, but this is great news.
have a look at who proposed this change and you’ll see why it’s being done. it’s clear as day that this isn’t a win for anyone on the internet in Australia
Curious to see what it’s like in 40 years when the world is ruled by Australians.
Since she had been identified as under 16, they feared “her friends will keep using Snapchat to talk and organise social events and she will be left out”.
FFS, we all got along just fine and dandy with group-chats via text message. We weren’t fucking cavemen.
The fact that this is her fear (and the fact that it’s a legitimate fear) proves just how much controls like this are needed. It’s literally digital crack that they think there’s simply no other way to communicate anymore (both her and her friends)
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