Terry Flew
24 February 2025
The Australian Federal Parliament passed the world’s first ban on social media for individuals under 16 in November 2024. The ban, set to take effect at the end of 2025, will restrict access for young people to designated social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, X, Snapchat, and TikTok. However, YouTube is exempt due to its educational use and dedicated kids’ channel.
This legislation was championed by the Labor Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, as well as Labor state premiers, notably Peter Malinauskas, Premier of South Australia and New South Wales Premier Chris Minns. Their advocacy was influenced by NYU Professor Jonathan Haidt’s 2024 book The Anxious Generation, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen who argued that her former employer deliberately sought to ‘hook’ young people on their platforms, and U.S. social psychologist Jean Twenge.
The new legislation, supported by both major parties—the Labor and Liberal parties— but opposed by independents and the Greens, comes in the context of growing frustration with the perceived failure of self-regulation by digital platform companies. This has been a view held by both the Labor government and the previous Liberal-National Party Coalition government. The News Media Bargaining Code introduced by the Coalition in 2021, the failed attempt to legislate a Misinformation Bill by the Albanese government, and the social media ban can all be seen as manifestations of a regulatory turn in digital policy in Australia.
Expert vs public opinion
A notable feature of discussion around the proposed ban is the gap between expert opinion and public opinion. While there are academics who support the ban, the majority have been opposed. Opponents of the law—including social media researchers, communications academics, and youth advocates—argue that increasing media literacy and education are better solutions than outright bans. An open letter arguing that a ban is too blunt an instrument was signed by 140 signatories, including leading social media academics, youth advocacy groups and tech sector NGOs. Over 15,000 submissions were received in response to the call for feedback on the proposed Bill, and academics have been critical of what they perceive to be rushed legislation and a highly choreographed Social Media Summit that sidelined critics of the proposed ban.
By contrast, polling data on the social media ban in Australia shows consistent majority support for such a ban, which increased once legislation was actually put forward. While the nature of questions on social media regulation varies considerably between polls, a September 2024 Essential Media poll finding the number of people supporting such a ban was 67% (17% opposed) and majority support among those aged 18-34 (55% support/24% opposed). Some overseas responses have also been very positive. South Australian Premier Peter Malinouskas was awarded 2024 Foreign Politician of the Year on The Rest is Politics UK podcast based on his push for such a social media ban, with hosts Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart commending him for having the courage to take on global tech giants.
Arguments for and against the ban
Several key factors led to this new legislation, including:
- Failed Self-Regulation – Bipartisan frustration with digital platforms’ inability to self-regulate, exemplified by X (formerly Twitter) withdrawing from Australia’s self-regulatory Misinformation Code of Practice, developed by the industry body DiGi (Digital Industry Group), after it was to be fined for failure to comply with provisions of the Code.
- Youth Mental Health Concerns – a variety of studies, in Australia and internationally, have pointed to a correlation between greater social media use among young people since 2012 and worsening mental health outcomes, including self-harm.
- Inadequate Age Enforcement – While age restrictions apply on most social media platforms to a 13+ age requirement, they have been routinely ignored in practice, due in part to the difficulties in age verification. It was reported that TikTok had removed up to one million underage users ahead of the Bill’s passage.
- Court Cases & Safety Concerns – Legal battles such as X refusing to remove a violent video at the request of Australia’s eSafety Commissioner indicated limits to relying upon the consultative approach pioneered by the Commissioner, which has promoted corporate social licence and ‘safety by design’.
- Traditional Media Influence – Campaigns led by the News Corporation newspapers and commercial radio stations such as Let Kids Be Kids gained public support, particularly from parents concerned about cyberbullying, and kept pressure on politicians to be seen to respond.
The concerns raised with the proposed social media ban by critics have included:
- Human rights concerns – The Australian Human Rights Commission indicated that the legislation is potentially in breach of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, as well as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).
- Whether bans are too blunt an instrument to respond to the nuanced concerns about the impacts of social media on young people, with better resourcing of parents and teachers and digital media literacy programs being an arguably more effective approach.
- The lack of reliable age-assurance technology, including privacy concerns and concerns about incorrect designation of user ages.
- Social media’s positive impact on marginalized youth, particularly those feeling excluded from family, school and community.
- Contested claims about the evidence on young people, social media and mental health.
- The risk of pushing young users toward less regulated platforms.
- The arbitrary nature of 16 as the designated age limit, with earlier drafts of the bill suggesting 14 instead.
Changing attitudes to social media governance
Research on social media’s effects remains inconclusive, and there has been strong pushback against Haidt’s evidence in particular. At the same time, the legislation reflects a broader shift toward regulatory intervention that is occurring across areas including competition policy, content policies and policies towards the development and use of artificial intelligence. Comparable initiatives to the Australian social media ban are under consideration in France, Norway, Ireland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, as well as in some US states.
Historically, governments have sought to distance themselves from direct regulation of social media. Concerns that it can mark a slippery slope towards online censorship have co-existed with the point that the companies themselves are best placed to have oversight of content on their platforms, and that they can be more agile and responsive than governments. Marking a broader shift towards networked governance and away from ‘command and-control’ regulation, there has been a preference in many countries for platform self-regulation underpinned by partnerships with NGOs, academics and advisory councils.
Public sentiment among young people may also be shifting. A recent survey by Common Sense Media found that 52% of people under 18 in the U.S. distrust social media companies with their data. It is also harder to sustain the argument that young people should have unfettered access to social media platforms that are themselves seen as being increasingly subject to what Cory Doctorow has termed “enshittification”. There is also a growing sense that while government regulation is a blunt instrument lacking flexibility, frustration with Big Tech’s disregard for national governments and civic priorities has driven a turn towards nation-state regulation. As the Internet historian Fred Turner has observed:
In the case of technology, it won’t work if we simply try to get tech folks to believe differently … I think the state has to get involved. One of the myths that the tech world has hoisted on us is that the state is, itself, evil and that it doesn’t represent the people. Instead, only the tech world represents the people because they are busy collating the people’s voices with search engines and social media.
Will the Australian social media ban actually go ahead?
With bipartisan political support and with public opinion largely supporting the social media ban, there is little prospect of the legislation being overturned after the pending 2025 Australian Federal election, whichever side comes to form a parliamentary majority. What will happen after the election will largely be determined by the interaction between the Federal government and tech companies, and may be influenced by international events.
One scenario is that the legislation comes into force by December 2025 as intended, and time will tell whether it is effective nor not. Of particular interest will be how age assurance technologies work in practice, with failures of these programs likely to be widely discussed by the legislation’s critics.
Another possibility is that the legislation comes into place, but that tech companies negotiate a carve out with the Federal government by setting up teen-specific versions of their platforms. Google was able to have YouTube exempted from the ban on this basis, and Meta has been promoting its Instagram Teen Accounts as a workaround. The government would see this as a win, and it would reinforce the possibilities of a digital duty of care being effective, as proposed in the review of the Online Safety Act. The lesson would be that it was the threat of legislation, rather than negotiation, that was required to bring global tech companies around to preferred ways of operating in the public interest.
A third possibility is that the legislation will be struck down in the Federal Court of Australia as being unconstitutional. While Australia does not have freedom of speech protected in the Constitution, there is an implied right of political communication, and some have argued that the new laws could be found to impinge unduly upon the rights of those under 16 to receive political information and engage in public life.
A final possibility is that US-based tech companies will successfully lobby the Trump Administration to threaten Australia with retaliatory tariffs if such legislation is enacted, and that the Australian Federal government would withdraw the legislation rather than risk adverse trade treatment from the U.S., which is its fourth largest export market. US Vice-President JD Vance warned that the U.S. looks unfavorably on content moderation rules as a form of “authoritarian censorship”, and X CEO Elon Musk, who currently has a great deal of political influence in the U.S., has described the proposed ban as a “backdoor way to control access to the Internet”.
Many critics of the proposed social media ban for under-16s want the Australian Federal government to instead implement stronger controls over digital platform companies, including quality standards for children’s content, data extraction controls, algorithmic manipulation, and stronger privacy laws to combat ‘surveillance capitalism.’ It would be ironic if nation-state regulations were struck down in favor of a global deregulatory agenda led by US tech companies in coalition with the Trump administration.
This post first appeared on LSE@Media blog, 18 February 2025.
