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.
As someone that grew up with an “unmonitored” internet. I can say that it was significantly more healthy than the profit driven “keep watching” algorithm that is all of social media today.
Yeah. I saw “two girls one cup” and “lemon party”. But, did I slowly have my perspective of reality changed by the 30 second videos I swiped on for hours at a time for days on end?
No, most of my time was spent learning about computers, “stealing” music, and chatting with my real life friends.
I don’t think a kid today can experience that internet anymore. It’s gone. But acting like “unmonitored” internet access is worse is pearl clutching and ignoring the fundamental problems the profit driven internet has created at the expense of societies mental health.
Kids will absolutely find another place to connect online in Australia. But, honestly, I think whatever that is will be healthier than the absolute brain rot that is profit driven social media.
We got to this point because parents think that kids need a monitored internet. Afraid of online predators. So it was passed off to corporations that learned how to systematically institute mental abuse in order to keep their apps open longer.
Preach it.
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.
Except that YT hides pretty much everything interesting behind a login wall these days.
I tried to listen to a Daft Punk song yesterday in a private tab and was blocked.
I think that’s easier said than done. There are a lot of negatives associated with social media and some are easier to put restrictions on (say violent content) but I don’t think we really have a good grasp of all the ways use is associated with depression for example. And wouldn’t some of this still fall back to age restricted areas, kind of like with movies?
But yeah, it would be nice to see more push back on the tech companies instead of the consumers
Its a very simple fix with a few law changes.
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The act of promoting or curating user submitted data makes the company strictly liable for any damages done by the content.
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The deliberate spreading of harmful false information makes the hosting company liable for damages.
This would bankrupt Facebook, Twitter, etc within 6 months.
The act of promoting or curating user submitted data makes the company strictly liable for any damages done by the content.
I assume you don’t mean simply providing the platform for the content to be hosted, in that case I agree this would definetly help.
The deliberate spreading of harmful false information makes the hosting company liable for damages.
This one is damn near impossible to enforce for the sole reason of the word “deliberate”, the issue is that I would not support such a law without that part.
This one is damn near impossible to enforce for the sole reason of the word “deliberate”, the issue is that I would not support such a law without that part.
It would also be easily abused, especially since someone would have to take a look and check, which would already put a bottleneck in the system, and the social media site would have to take it down to check, just in case, which gives someone a way to effectively remove posts.
I left out the hosting part for just that reason. The company has to activately do something to gain the liability. Right now the big social media companies are deliberately prioritizing harmful information to maximize engagement and generate money.
As for enforcement hosters have had to develop protocols for removal of illegal content since the very beginning. Its still out there and can be found, but laws and mostly due diligence from hosters, makes it more difficult to find. Its the reason Lemmy is not full of illegal pics etc. The hosters are actively removing it and banning accounts that publish it.
Those protocols could be modified to include obvious misinformation bots etc. Think about the number of studies that have shown that just a few accounts are the source of the majority of harmful misinformation on social media.
Of course any reporting system needs to be protected from abuse. The DMCA takedown abusers are a great example of why this is needed.
That kind of aligns with some actions I would love to see but I don’t really see how it helps in the example I used to highlight some of the harder things to fix, depression. How does that improve the correlation between social media use and depression in teenagers? I can see it will improve from special cases like removing posts pro eating disorder content but I’m pretty confident the depression correlation goes well beyond easy to moderate content.
Also, if we presumed that some amount of horrific violence is okay for adults to choose to see and a population of people thinks its reasonable to restrict this content for people below a certain age (or swap violence for sex / nudity) then do we just decide we know better than that population, that freedom is more important, or does it fall back to age restrictions again (but gated on parts of the site)? I’m avoiding saying “government” here and going with “population of people” to try to decouple a little from some of the negatives people associate with government, especially since COVID
But yeah, holding tech companies accountable like that would be lovely to see. I suspect the cost is so large they couldn’t pay so it would never happen, but I think that’s because society has been ignoring their negative externalities for so long they’re intrenched
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Oh definitely not easy, my point is that it’s even harder now
Why do you say it’s harder now?
You can’t use the think of the children line
True, but there is momentum. It’s empowering other countries and that could lead to a second pass at legislation in Aus after its not so outlandish or it could lead to another country doing something better and then Aus copying after the costly validation was done by someone else. I think waiting for perfect legislation likely leads to what we’ve had for a while and that’s even less / very little push back on tech companies
It’s a bandaid. And just like previous attempts like this all this will do is make Australian kids better at circumventing the censorship or using an alternative website. Which, honestly, is probably a positive in and of itself. I’d much rather my kid be visiting some random forum type website (like I grew up with) then the absolute brain rot that is social media algorithms.
Seeing “lemon party” posted before the mods removed it definitely fucked me up less than the slop being fed into the brains of teenagers on social media today.
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.
How dare you imply that a parent should educate their children? Don’t you know how much they have to work hard already every single day to grow up the child no one forced them to have in the first place??
“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.
Get her a dumb phone. Install parental controls.
If this actually worked. I tried it once and it did not work at all. Platforms/apps don’t seem to respect the device settings at all.
You can block apps or give them a time limit
block apps
block all 150000000 apps on the app store?
Yes. You can enable password requirements to install them. iOS at least, don’t know about Android.
can i also block developer options and apk sideloading?
all her 14 to 15-year-old friends have been age verified as 18 by Snapchat
I love how this sentence is just casually sprinkled there. So platforms are getting $50m fines if they do not implement “age verification”, but no problem if they fail to identify minors as such? Tells you everything about how they really care about protecting children.
That’s not how the law is structured.
Sites are required to implement reasonable measures.
If kids are being evaluated as 18, with no additional checks, that’s not reasonable and they’re risking the penalties.
We’re going to find out whether the regulator has much appetite to issue those penalties, but we will see I guess.
but no problem if they fail to identify minors as such?
it’s a new technology. it will probably take years to figure out how to do age-verification properly.
Or, hear me out, let’s not waste time developing useless and harmful surveillance technology.
None of this is required to safeguard children, and it does a bad job in its attempt - while doing a great job of scanning every user’s face and documents.
Parents should be responsible, educated and empowered with tools to control their kids’ activities online. Networks and mobile devices can relatively easily be configured to restrict and monitor activity, especially for young children where you might want to choose what to allow, rather than to block. There will be ways around them, but if that 1% is motivated enough and knows they shouldn’t, I think that’s fine.
it will probably take years to figure out how to do age-verification properly.
yeah, what i actually meant with this was that it will take years for platforms to figure out how to do age-verification properly without infringing on the privacy of its users.
not because it is complicated, but because it is a societal process and these are always slow as hell.
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.
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
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.
But how will the sites make money? Will someone please think of the lost profit!!!??
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
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
One parent said their daughter was “completely addicted” to social media
Literally the fault of the parent.
There is precedence though. We age gate: nicotine, alcohol, gambling etc…
we shouldnt expect parents to be monitoring children 24/7. actually, as children get older they should be given freedoms, parents have the right to expect our society has some guardrails.
Not to say it’s never the parents fault…
Parents who were also raised by social media? This isn’t a new problem but it is a problem that’s getting worse, I don’t know if a ban is the answer but so far nobody has even suggested an effective alternative to reducing screen-time for both adults and kids.
This ban isn’t supposed to solve a problem overnight, but it’s supposed to influence some segment of the population to socialize, to form real communities and to hopefully grow up capable of helping their own kids not get addicted.
This is a real problem, it’s widespread across the globe and many, many studies have shown the harm social media has on a huge percentage of teens.
Also, parents work. Parents sleep. You can’t fucking hover over your teen night and day, you would hate that worse.
The solution is education not bans. This is crazy. Regulating social media access has some major privacy concerns, will make parents more complacent and will only cause kids to seek other more dubious means of communicating. It also places a major wall in front of the development of new social media platforms.
The solution is education not bans.
I agree.
But what do we do about the fact that even though our knowledge, research and understanding of the problem has increased, the problem has gotten worse? Is there more that can be done on that front that you think would be effective? Genuinely asking to help me shape my opinion.
It’s blooming into a larger-scale societal problem than just hoping enough people pull through, a lack of stable mental health and attention spans across large swaths of your population start to erode your society.
Of course! We force cigarette manufacturers to put the dangers of smoking on the package.
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
This is a wildly popular measure in Australia.
Popular doesn’t mean just.
not around me
Are you 12?
are you 11?
No.
Curious to see what it’s like in 40 years when the world is ruled by Australians.
Have you seen mad Max?
I kinda want to see that movie others were asking for. The one set in the mad max universe where the rest of the world was okay.
So like Beneath A Steel Sky but reverse Uno card.
I’ll get out my good loin cloth.
Just going to teach those kids its okay to break the law.
A lesson that is not incorrect. Depends on the law.
Make it a world wide ban to the age of 80
That’d be an effective total ban, because noone would want to be on a social media platform with entierly 80+ year olds. It’d be all corny minion memes.
No offence, children, but this is great news.
