A plan to ban all Australian children under 16 from social media is unworkable, unenforceable and ultimately won’t help the people it aims to protect, experts have told 91av.
While social media platforms are banned outright in some authoritarian regimes, no democratic country has gone as far as the proposal from Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in completely restricting them for under-16s.
“Social media is doing social harm to our kids. I’m calling time on it,” on 8 November. Legislation due to be introduced before the end of the year will have no exemption for parental consent or for pre-existing accounts, which will simply be deleted. Exactly which platforms will be included in the ban is unclear, but it is expected to include Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube.
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Concerns are already being raised. “It’s ill-thought through hot air that will not be enforceable,” says , one of Australia’s leading cyber safety experts. “The world is watching Australia, and the world is also laughing at Australia.”
A key problem with enforcement is age verification. The government is planning a trial of technology meant to determine whether a user is 18 or older, or between 13 and 16, which is expected to examine various biometric and ID criteria. Similar efforts to limit access to adult content in the UK with age verification systems were repeatedly delayed and eventually abandoned as unworkable.
Even if Australia does develop solutions, it is likely that canny teenagers will find technical workarounds to the ban, such as using virtual private network (VPN) services, which allow users to pretend to be visiting a social platform from another country. “This ban is virtually impossible,” says at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.
It is also unclear why the government has chosen 16 as the cut-off point. “No magic happens at the age of 16 to make you ready for the challenges of trolls, bullying and pornography and all the other problems online,” she says.
at the University of Sydney says studies have found links between social media use and psychological harm in under 16s, but the evidence of causation is “not clear at all”.
This sentiment is echoed by McLean. “Sixteen is a nothing number, not linked to any level of cognitive development and plucked out of thin air,” she says. She supports 13 as a more realistic age to set the entry point to access social media, but says this is linked to a precedent set by US legislation in the 1990s rather than any scientific evidence.
For her part, Jeffery is sceptical of 13 as a cut-off point, saying it is also “not related to any physical or developmental milestones”.
Instead of banning children from social media platforms, Given says the government should be forcing the firms behind them to clean up their content by employing larger teams of moderators and better algorithms to promptly remove inappropriate content.
“These are issues that can be solved technically,” she says. “An outright ban will mean some kids will start to access social media in secret, and that raises the risk of it being more harmful for them.”
While many parents are supportive of a ban, others see it as an overreach and fear the damage that will be done to teenagers engaged in positive activities online, says Given. She highlights the case of , a channel that primarily publishes the journalism of teenagers and relies on access to social media to research its stories. Leo Puglisi, who founded 6 News when he was 11, recently that without social media his outlet “simply wouldn’t exist”.
McLean also fears for children who are neurodivergent or are members of the LGBTQ+ community, who might find it difficult to connect with their peers at school or in other in-person situations. “Many of them have found their support community online,” she says. “What a cruel thing it would be to take that away.”
