Australia’s world-first social media ban begins as millions of children and teens lose access to accounts
www.theguardian.com
Accounts held by users under 16 must be removed on apps that include TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, Snapchat, Reddit, Kick, Twitch and Threads under ban

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”.

  • Arcane2077@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1222·
    4 天前

    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

    • ms.lane@lemmy.worldEnglish
      398·
      4 天前

      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.

      • wheezy@lemmy.mlEnglish
        35·
        3 天前

        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.

        • noobdoomguy8658@feddit.orgEnglish
          8·
          3 天前

          I just wanna say hi, and I remember those days, too.

          For a long time, I couldn’t understand people saying they hate the Internet or their phone or anything like that, because I had been having a blast for so long and thought it was one of the most vibrant, fun, educational and useful part of my life that has taught me a lot.

          But at some point I found myself scrolling the same site for hours, trying to tear my eyes off screen and telling myself that I wasn’t enjoying myself and that I should stop, but I just couldn’t. That’s when I finally understood.

          I try to bring back intention to this. I think what I want to do online first before I do it – what topic to look for when I want to watch a video, what kind of news or discourse I want to read, what’s that on my mind that I want to share. Talking to my peers, I often feel like this kind of approach has long been lost to not thinking for yourself and wanting entertainment to just sort of happen to you, predict what you want, guess.

          Big money figuring out the Internet has been a very bad thing.

      • socsa@piefed.socialEnglish
        312·
        4 天前

        My greedy motivation is to not interact with children on the Internet. I don’t actually care what other people’s children do on the Internet beyond that.

    • wheezy@lemmy.mlEnglish
      8·
      3 天前

      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.

    • porcoesphino@mander.xyzEnglish
      14·
      4 天前

      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

      • The_v@lemmy.worldEnglish
        14·
        4 天前

        Its a very simple fix with a few law changes.

        1. The act of promoting or curating user submitted data makes the company strictly liable for any damages done by the content.

        2. The deliberate spreading of harmful false information makes the hosting company liable for damages.

        This would bankrupt Facebook, Twitter, etc within 6 months.

        • Attacker94@lemmy.worldEnglish
          7·
          4 天前

          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.

          • T156@lemmy.worldEnglish
            4·
            4 天前

            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.

          • The_v@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            4 天前

            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.

        • porcoesphino@mander.xyzEnglish
          21·
          3 天前

          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

            • porcoesphino@mander.xyzEnglish
              1·
              3 天前

              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

    • socsa@piefed.socialEnglish
      521·
      4 天前

      There is literally nothing negative about this. Children will be exposed to less internet propaganda, and forums are generally much better with fewer children. Everyone wins.

      • WoodScientist@lemmy.worldEnglish
        172·
        4 天前

        And the suicide rate of queer and other marginalized kids will skyrocket. What’s a few thousand dead kids in the name of protecting the children, right?

        • stickly@lemmy.worldEnglish
          13·
          3 天前

          Wasn’t aware that social media keeps kids alive?..

          I’ve seen enough stories on kids being cyber bullied into suicide that I really doubt there’s enough happy inclusion on these platforms to balance that.

          • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            3·
            3 天前

            Oh come on use your damn brain you are smarter than this, imagine growing up as a queer kid in the middle of nowhere in a very conservative community, can you really not get it through your head that maybe just maybe then the internet might be a lifeline for kids like that? Yes the internet is toxic, but that doesn’t mean the internet isn’t also a vital lifeline for countless very isolated people… who are isolated against their will.

            • stickly@lemmy.worldEnglish
              11·
              3 天前

              I’m trying to “use my damn brain”, I want genuine research showing this as a benefit that outweighs the numerous and well documented negatives that social media causes in children and young adults (depression, social isolation, body image issues, extremist and regressive worldviews, sleep and concentration issues, and on and on…).

              If you can actually show me that it saves queer kids from oppression in a way that couldn’t be done via other methods (school programs, library funding, safe and child friendly neighborhoods, media representation, etc.) then maybe we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Otherwise this is keeping the baby by voluntarily flooding your house with sewage.

              • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyzEnglish
                3·
                3 天前

                If you can actually show me that it saves queer kids from oppression in a way that couldn’t be done via other methods (school programs, library funding, safe and child friendly neighborhoods, media representation, etc.) then maybe we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water.

                No, the onus is on you to prove your points before you assert something you potentially have no sufficient alternative for should be denied.

                Here is a place for you to start educating yourself!

                This review identified LGBTQ youths’ uses of social media to connect with like-minded peers, manage their identity, and seek support. In the few studies that considered mental health outcomes (5/26, 19%), the use of social media appeared to be beneficial to the mental health and well-being of this group [11,34,44,55,60]. In this systematic review, we identified the various important beneficial roles of social media, but the findings were limited by weaknesses in the evidence base. This information may be useful for professionals (eg, educators, clinicians, and policy makers) working with LGBTQ youth to consider the appropriate use of social media in interventions as it provides an evidence base for the role of social media in the lives of LGBTQ youths. These findings help further understand how LGBTQ youths use social media and its positive and negative impacts on their mental health and well-being. Further research is required to provide stronger evidence of how social media is used for connectivity, identity, and support and determine causal links to mental health outcomes. We recommend larger, representative, and prospective research, including intervention evaluation, to better understand the potential of social media to support the health and well-being of marginalized LGBTQ young people. It is imperative that social media is understood and its beneficial use is supported to ensure improved outcomes.

                https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9536523/

                Edit here is another

                Just as the American Academy of Pediatrics has called for rethinking the shame-based narrative of a developmentally appropriate use of social media [33] clinicians might consider both the risks and benefits that social media use can have for youth and adults. Clinicians can work closely with local community organizations and advocate for positive policy change to better support LGBTQ + youth. There is a need for more research on BIPOC LGBTQ + adolescents as the intersectionality of their identities brings nuance to the interactions on social media and the impact this has on those populations [3, 4, 13, 15, 29]. There is also a shortage of research involving LGBTQ + youth of intersectional backgrounds, including rural, racial/ethnic minority, gender minority, and neurodivergent youth. Researchers are developing new tools like the Social Media Benefits Scale (SMBS) that can be used as a clinical tool to help develop and implement a social media strategy to give a new multidimensional way for professional practitioners to develop strategies for interventions [34]. Additionally, there are increasing digital modalities to mitigate the disproportionate high rate of online victimization and suicidal risk for LGBTQ + youth. At the University of Pittsburgh, an app called Flourish is being developed through codesigning to augment schools and mental health services for LGBTQ + youth who face online victimization [35]. Other digital interventions are being designed with LGBTQ + youth feedback, and concluded that tech-based tools, such as apps and chatbots, offer immediate, non-judgmental feedback but can feel impersonal [15]. Understanding informal learning and non-clinical contexts that can help shape the mental wellbeing of LGBTQ + youth will be critical. For instance, virtual camps during the COVID-19 pandemic that celebrated the LGBTQ + identity development and supported social network development reported longitudinally reduced depressive symptoms, friendship formation, and positive changes in self-esteem [36, 37]. This is an initiative that could be specialized to outreach underserved LGBTQ + communities such as rural BIPOC adolescents.

                https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40124-024-00338-2

                Edit 2 another

                Social media can provide benefits for some youth by providing positive community and connection with others who share identities, abilities, and interests. It can provide access to important information and create a space for self-expression.9 The ability to form and maintain friendships online and develop social connections are among the positive effects of social media use for youth.18, 19 These relationships can afford opportunities to have positive interactions with more diverse peer groups than are available to them offline and can provide important social support to youth.18 The buffering effects against stress that online social support from peers may provide can be especially important for youth who are often marginalized, including racial, ethnic, and sexual and gender minorities.20, 21, 22 For example, studies have shown that social media may support the mental health and well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, asexual, transgender, queer, intersex and other youths by enabling peer connection, identity development and management, and social support.23 Seven out of ten adolescent girls of color report encountering positive or identity-affirming content related to race across social media platforms.24 A majority of adolescents report that social media helps them feel more accepted (58%), like they have people who can support them through tough times (67%), like they have a place to show their creative side (71%), and more connected to what’s going on in their friends’ lives (80%).25 In addition, research suggests that social media-based and other digitally-based mental health interventions may also be helpful for some children and adolescents by promoting help-seeking behaviors and serving as a gateway to initiating mental health care.8, 26, 27, 28, 29

                https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK594763/#ch1.s1

                This is complicated, you can’t just take away a thing that for many vulnerable people may be a lifeline and just handwave and say “well we should be solving the problem with other methods anyways!”, these are problems now that need addressing now, your dismissal is irrelevant to the people who are isolated and who could find connection through the internet that you are advocating for denying because it isn’t the right way to solve the problem in your opinion.

                • stickly@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  3 天前

                  something you potentially have no sufficient alternative for should be denied.

                  Not having an obvious alternative ready doesn’t change the cost/benefit weight for society at large. Just because cars are the only way we have to navigate suburban sprawl doesn’t absolve them of being one of the worst modes of transport for safety, the climate, passenger efficiency, etc… We should be talking about radically restricting their use, not shrugging and trying a driver education bandaid.

                  For a laugh, a scoping review of social media and adolescent risks through 2022. Sure, plenty of questions on causality, but also quantitative articles on direct impacts to physical health and harmful exposure to constant ads. In dozens of articles, just 1 (one) article finding a positive socializing impact… I’m certainly leaning towards denial by default…

                  • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyzEnglish
                    1·
                    3 天前

                    For a laugh, a scoping review of social media and adolescent risks through 2022. Sure, plenty of questions on causality, but also quantitative articles on direct impacts to physical health and harmful exposure to constant ads. In dozens of articles, just 1 (one) article finding a positive socializing impact… I’m certainly leaning towards denial by default…

                    Wait… why would a scoping review of risks necessarily include evidence of a positive socializing impact? It is by definition a review of risks…?

    • venusaur@lemmy.worldEnglish
      316·
      4 天前

      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.